Meat for school dinners in Cheshire West and Chester will no longer be supplied by local butchers.

Instead, food delivered to schools in the borough will be supplied by national catering company Brakes, after Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWaC) made the decision to amalgamate with Wirral to supply food for school meals under a new joint council firm called Edsential.

Local butchers including Dutton’s of Kelsall, Birtwistle’s in Northwich and Littlers in Sandiway have been supplying meat for schools in the borough for almost a decade, but just before February half term, headteachers learned that CWaC were terminating these contracts to bring in Brakes, a move that has angered parents who say they were not consulted about the decision.

'Extremely disappointing'

Liz Moulton, whose two young children attend Ashton Hayes Primary School, one of the affected schools, told the Chronicle the news was ‘extremely disappointing.’

“The council has implemented this change without any consultation with headteachers or parents,” she said. “We all know that council budgets are tight but making sure our children are fed quality food from local sources ought to be a priority, instead of saving a few quid. My children are both entitled to free school dinners because of the Government’s decision to provide free meals for all infants and like many parents I felt reassured that their meat was coming from a quality butcher a couple of miles away.

“Knowing that their food is now going to be provided by a huge global firm not only undermines my faith in the quality of the meat, but also undermines the general spirit of community, which thrives on local suppliers providing local schools and businesses with local produce. Above all, the council’s actions will serve only to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth,” she added.

Another parent, Vicky Pipes said: “As a parent I’m concerned that quality will suffer as a result of cutting costs. We don’t want to go back to cheap processed food in our schools.”

Local suppliers


However, Edsential spokesperson Ian McGrady said he wanted to reassure parents that the ‘vast majority’ of supplied meat in the shake-up will come from Cheshire farms that ‘meet the highest quality and welfare standards.’

“The local farming community will still provide meat and produce to West Cheshire schools and are now also benefiting from the opportunity to supply Wirral schools,” he told The Chronicle. “Our new supply chain will deliver all of the benefits of the previous butchery companies, including the highest levels of food security.

“All meat is sourced, slaughtered, processed and packed by a single supplier ensuring complete product integrity. Our supplier has the highest levels of traceability, stringent technical standards, and an extensive testing regime that means we can always be sure that what we get is exactly what we ordered. We are also able to reduce the total food miles and CO2 impact of meat delivery by reducing the number of vans on the road by up to half.

“All of our Cheshire West schools, circa 135 of them, receive food from Brakes which they always have; the scope was simply increased to include meat.”

Profits

Mr McGrady also said that any profits made by Edsential would be reinvested into projects and initiatives within schools and that all money spent with the company would be kept within the education community of Cheshire West and Wirral.

A spokesperson for Dutton’s Butchers who had been supplying meat to schools for the past eight years, told The Chronicle: “We are obviously disappointed that our contract hasn’t been extended. We were the pilot scheme for this contract, it grew from us supplying three schools to six, to nine to 18 schools in the rural areas. However, as a local business, we will survive this.”