News

School meals in the vast majority of primary and special schools across the city of Plymouth are provided by CATERed and that number has just increased. The newly joined schools, which are situated across the City and represent a real cross section of the Plymouth area, are:

• Elburton Primary School
• Ford Primary School
• Hooe Primary Academy
• Hyde Park Infants School
• Hyde Park Junior School
• Plaistow Hill Primary School
• Pomphlett Primary School
• Victoria Road Primary School
• Widewell Primary School

Brad Pearce, managing director of CATERed and the Immediate Past Chair of LACA, said: “It’s great to announce that a further nine schools in the city have joined the cooperative and now receive services from CATERed from the start of this term.

“These additional schools means that CATERed are now providing services in more schools, including two in Cornwall and one in West Devon, than when they started. All but seven primary schools in the city are now part of the CATERed Team.

“The schools come from the Learning Academies Trust, following a recent merger with another MAT, and it means that all 18 schools within the Trust - the largest single Trust in the city - now sit within the cooperative. Some of the schools have not previously been with CATERed others chose to opt out and provide their own services but have now returned to the cooperative.

“The positive message that this sends to all schools and multi-academy trusts locally and regionally about how working cooperatively can achieve so much more cannot be under-estimated. The reasons for coming to CATERed include the existing relationship we had with the Trust, management of the service, staff and training, procurement and menu development.

“We’re also receiving enquiries from schools outside of the city boundary on a regular basis to discuss how the cooperative works and if they could join the Plymouth Schools Shareholding Company and work with the CATERed Team. It looks like being a really interesting year with many opportunities,” he added.

CATERed was formed in 2015 in an arrangement between Plymouth Council’s then loss-making education catering service and local schools. As a cooperative owned by the Council, and the schools as members of the Plymouth Schools Shareholding Company, the business operates as a Teckal company.

This describes a company dedicated to being ‘outward facing’ or which is primarily focussed on delivery back to the local authority, but which can trade with third parties up to 20% of its activities, helping to generate extra revenue to a small degree.

Brad says that with the business approaching its 10th year, CATERed remains unique in the UK, operating in the way it does with schools cooperatively committing and sharing their budgets for school food so that all pupils in all schools who are part of the group can receive great tasting, freshly prepared, hot school food made from fresh, seasonal, locally and regionally sourced ingredients and produce.

“We all know that it’s been a tough last three years for everyone and this is, perhaps, never more apparent than with the provision of school lunches where frontline staff worked throughout the pandemic and school closures to ensure that the children and families most in need continued to receive lunches either in school or via weekly food parcels.

“I know from my year as LACA chair the impacts felt by colleagues up and down the country with food inflation, staff recruitment and inadequate levels of Government funding.”