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“Five education secretaries, four chancellors, three PMs, two leadership coups, and the partridge had to sell the pear tree to pay the gas bill.”

With thanks to Twitter for the above, this struck a chord and made me smile.

We’ve reached the end of another term and, there is no question that, once again, it’s been a difficult year for all of us but, what a year!

Whether you’re on the frontline in a school, managing and running a service across different parts of the country or one of our Partners and amazing suppliers this year you should know that your commitment and work to continue to provide freshly prepared, great tasting, hot school food for children and young people has been beyond amazing and, whilst it may not always be obvious at the time, has not gone unnoticed.

When I took over from Jacquie as Chair in September, I knew that we had some really good building blocks in place to take LACA – the school food people forward and further cement our position as the voice of the industry and the “go to” people for media and politicians who wanted, no needed, to know what was going on, the great work that was taking place and, importantly, the continued impacts following two years of the pandemic, recruitment issues, food and supply chain, food inflation, energy costs and continued inadequate funding for free school meals and universal infant free school meals.

If we look back over the year, we’ve achieved a lot and particularly since the summer when, following the great member response to our first full Cost-of-Living Survey in May which lead to the BBC’s Education Team running a national piece across all broadcast outlets in July.  Subsequent media for this story resulted in a reach of over 67m viewers and listeners – I think that’s a pretty good way to let people know what’s going on!

But we couldn’t have done that without your support and you came through again for our updated surveys in September and November.  Look out for more high profile national coverage in the coming weeks.

Of course, what your responses have made clear is that, largely this year alone, we’ve seen inflation across all food categories of between 50% - 70% whilst funding has remained critically low and inadequate.

This is why LACA have continued to lobby Government and push for recognition of the children missing out on FSM because of the current low eligibility threshold and an extension of eligibility for those living in families on universal credit (approximately 800,000) in the current cost-of-living crisis.  Crucially, we have continued our call for an increase in funding to support school caterers now and as we go forward.  So in real terms an increase in funding to meet the current costs, ring-fencing of funding so it reaches the caterer and then index-linked funding annually going forward.
Funding for infrastructure for any extension of eligibility is also crucial.

We can also look to the work going on in Wales and Scotland who are rolling out universal provision in primary schools with significantly better levels of funding for those meals and pupils and ask “Why not in England?”  “If not now, when?”

We will need to continue the fight over the coming months but, when we held LACA’s Annual School Lunch at the House of Commons on 01 December, I was pleased that we had such a good turn out of MPs and Lords and some very positive and interested conversations.  It did feel that those attending wanted to listen and hear from LACA about the pressures and what the solutions could be.  I have a number of important meetings lined up for the new year which will help push this messaging and continue to make our case.

So, we’ve achieved a lot with much still to do but, on behalf of the LACA Board, I wanted to thank each and every one of you for your support and for the amazing work that you done throughout the year and continue to do every day.  #TogetherWeMakeADifference.

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year break with family and friends.  Take time to rest and I look forward to seeing you all again in 2023!

Very best wishes

Brad Pearce
National Chair