News

Anne Bull, the former national vice chair of LACA Ltd, the largest network of public and private school meal providers in Britain, has been elected as the new chairman of the organisation. She officially took over on September 17th.

A LACA member since 1995, she became LACA Welsh Region chair in 1996, giving up only this year. A member of the LACA Ltd board of directors, she was elected LACA national vice chair in September 2011.

She has been head of catering and school facilities services at Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council since 1996 where she is responsible for 21,000 meals a day and a turnover of £15m a year. Head of the 1700-strong council catering team working across 150 different sites, she is also responsible for the council’s Meals on Wheels service, which produces 1,300 meals daily, plus the management of four council staff restaurants.

A passionate believer in the school meals service, she says she wants to ensure it continues to improve the health and well being of children and young people.

As part of the Food in Schools Working Group, she has helped develop the Welsh Nutritional Standards known as ‘Appetite for Life’, only now being introduced into schools.

Anne has helped ensure the Welsh Standards has been carefully considered and piloted to ease their introduction with the minimum of operational difficulty and customer resistance.

On her appointment, Anne says: ”I am privileged and honoured to have been chosen as the LACA national chair and I’m committed to ensuring LACA continues to be the voice of the school food industry.

“LACA members are passionate about the work they do for pupils and students in schools across Britain so one of my principle aims is for LACA to look at ways in which we can support ‘frontline’ staff, such as through new training and development packages.

“I am also keen that at the same time as raising the school meal industry’s profile at the national and political level, we also focus on the ‘grass roots’ needs of the LACA regional network which, I believe, is the bedrock of our organisation.

“Much work has been undertaken over the last year to raise the profile of LACA, both inside and outside of the industry. I will be aiming to continue the work, started by former national chair Lynda Mitchell, to ensure that school food sits high on the political agenda.

“As a result of new relationships we have won a place on several public review bodies and national pressure groups. LACA has also successfully forged some strong links with politicians and other industry bodies to ensure that the role of school meals remains at the core of the debate on future public health strategies as well as those focused on the well being of our children and young people.

“With Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, the Leon Restaurant chain co-founders, appointed to conduct another Government inquiry into school food, one of my key roles as national chair will be to ensure that the wealth of knowledge and expertise that is available to them from LACA and its members is embraced and reflected within the action plan they have been tasked to produce in 2013.

“As LACA chair my intention is to work closely with other board members to review and redefine our Future Directions strategy so that we can take our organisation into a new era of development, growth and influence. One, I hope, that will build on and extend our affiliations with other like-minded organisations here in the UK as well as elsewhere in the world.”

Born in Wales, she attended Priory Grammar School for Girls in Shrewsbury before gaining her catering qualifications at Birmingham College of Food & Domestic Arts, now part of University College Birmingham. She has since earned an MBA and a degree from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

On leaving college in 1974 she joined the BBC as a trainee catering manager, later moving to Sutcliffe Catering, now part of Compass Group. She rose to be area catering manager for South West Wales, before moving into school meals as senior operations manager with the in-house Term 3 Catering team at Mid Glamorgan County Council.

In the 1996 Welsh local government reorganisation Anne took up her current role with Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC.