'Genuine risk' to council's school meal service

Newcastle City Council subsidises its school meals service

A local authority could stop providing school meals due to rising costs.

Newcastle City Council official Christine Herriot said there was a "genuine risk" to the authority's ability to keep producing meals in-house.

The city currently subsidises the service, she said, but it is grappling with how to make £24m worth of cuts across the authority next year to balance the books.

Neighbouring North Tyneside Council outsourced its school meals provision to the private sector last year in an effort to reduce costs.

Ms Herriot said Newcastle council had predicted it would need to subsidise its school meals provision by £2.1m this year, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The director of city operations, neighbourhoods and regulatory services said: "We have a productivity model that we run in schools when producing the school meals service and, in an ideal world, we would want to cover the cost of delivering the service.

"The council currently subsidises the provision of school meals and we are working towards putting in place proposals in order to reduce that subsidy over time.

"But there is a genuine risk to the viability of the school meals service because of the current economic conditions we operate in."