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Tower Hamlets Council’s Contract Services team, which provides 24,000 local schoolchildren with lunches every day, was named Catering Business of the Year at the annual Lead Association for Education Catering (LACA) Awards, which were announced recently.

Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman said: “I am hugely proud of this award and cannot thank the Contract Services team enough for all their hard work.

“Our schools are rightly regarded as being among the best in the country, if not the world – and providing children with hot, healthy, nutritious meals is a significant factor in this success.

“Healthy children make better learners, and this is why we have taken the bold step of providing free meals for all our primary school pupils.”

LACA Awards judges said the Contract Services team had made an ‘outstanding’ contribution to catering for schools in the local area.

It is the second time the team has won the award, following on from its 2005 success. It is the first council to have won the accolade twice.

The award comes as the council prepares to start providing free school meals for every primary school pupil in the London borough.

The council supplies meals for almost all 100 primary and secondary schools in the borough, all of which are cooked fresh in the schools’ kitchens.

Every day it provides 24,000 meals in schools, which will rise to more than 30,000 a day from September when the council’s free school meals policy is introduced. Under the scheme, every primary school pupil, regardless of family’s income, will receive a free school meal. This will go beyond the Government’s new Universal Infant Free School Meals scheme, which applies only to children from Reception to Year 2.

Cllr Gulam Robbani, cabinet member for children’s services, said: “On behalf of the children and the parents of this borough, I would like to thank the Contract Services team for their magnificent achievements. After all, it is the children of Tower Hamlets who benefit from their outstanding hard work.”

Michael Hales, manager of the Contract Services team, said: “My team and I are absolutely delighted to have been recognised in this way for a second time.

“It demonstrates the dedication and commitment that all the catering team – from the kitchen assistants serving the food each day to my management team - put into to providing the best services we can in changing and challenging times.

“We are looking forward to providing free school meals for all primary school pupils from September.”

The LACA Awards were held in Birmingham on Thursday, July 10th.

The Catering Business of the Year award recognised Tower Hamlets’ achievements in providing an extra 4,000 meals from last September, when its initial free school meals scheme, for Reception and Year 1 pupils, was introduced.

The service holds the Silver Food for Life Catering Mark, an official stamp of approval from the Soil Association that its food meets organic, fresh and sustainable standards.