News

Warrington Borough Council School Meals Catering Service has announced that Gordon Carson, its catering services manager, has left the company to start his own school food advisory service.

He will also end his role as chair of the North West School Meals Caterers Forum.

During a council/service wide efficiency restructure, Carson decided the time was right to move on and start his own business given the direction and dimension that his service was taking. He had been in the post 10 years since November 2001.

Pat Lyons, former school meals operations manager has now taken control of the service.

Carson commented: "Being the head of the school meals service has been the most enjoyable, interesting, challenging and rewarding time of my professional career. I know I am leaving the service with a dedicated and talented team, and wish them well for the future."

 "Moving on was not easy decision to make, particularly in these austere times but in many respects, that may prove to be the catalyst to make my newly formed business a success. Some local authorities are cutting back on the qualitative aspects of their school meal provision".

He added: "That the new coalition government does not appear to have the appetite to resurrect Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) in Local Government, but there is a renewed and heightened emphasis on competition, competitiveness and demonstrating value for money."

"There is the potential to see the fragmentation of the school meals service as we know it. Schools are considering their options with a big eye on generating additional income streams to bolster their ever diminishing school budgets, not to mention the element of customer dissatisfaction due to the cut backs and consequential quality issues. There is a deliberate effort to downsize Local Authority front line services.

"Some Local authorities demonstrate a culture of cutting costs rather than taking a commercial approach in growing the business to make their services sustainable. Senior managers talk about commercialism but rarely practice it and this frustrates the life out of school meal managers immensely. However, I am aware of some exceptions to this in the North West."