By Angela Green: Southampton Head labels Chartwells meals in his school canteen “completely unacceptable”
Jason Ashley, head of Redbridge Community School in Southampton, has told school caterers Chartwells that the meals they are serving in his school canteen are “completely unacceptable”.
Such was Ashley’s furore he wrote a letter to parents, along with pictures showing some of the food, that have now been widely shared on social media. “If my own children were served it I would be exceptionally unhappy,” he wrote. Adding that he was “angry and disappointed” at the provision of meals and apologised to parents of the foundation secondary school, which caters for children aged 11 to 16.
Ashley additionally complained portion sizes have been getting smaller while prices were rising and said several meetings had been held with the caterer to examine how to improve the situation.
Support services at the school are provided under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract, with a management company determining the contracts for a range of activities including provision of food and meals.
Southampton City Council confirmed that schools within the city generally manage their own catering contracts, but those with PFI contracts have “little or no control over the quality of the services provided”.
The news prompted Labour MP for Southampton Test, Alan Whitehead, to comment: “This service provided by Chartwells is completely unacceptable.
“The fact that the headteacher of the school has had to resort to publicly calling out the caterer’s behaviour in order to spark action from the company is outrageous.
“Chartwells not only needs to rectify this situation immediately, but they must also provide the school and parents with an explanation as to how this situation occurred and what they are doing to ensure it won’t happen again in the future.”
Chartwells replied citing “operational challenges” and staffing issues at the school. A statement from Chartwells read: “We apologise that in this instance our usual level of service has fallen below the high standards we demand.
“We are committed to working in collaboration with the school and are implementing an immediate action plan to rectify these issues.”
Further information relating to the situation can be seen on the BBC website here.
PLEASE NOTE: We received fuller comment as below from Chartwells.
A spokesperson for Chartwells said:
“We recognise the importance of school meals, and our teams work hard to provide good quality food every day. We apologise that in this instance our level of service has fallen below the high standards we demand. We are committed to working in collaboration with the school and are implementing an immediate action plan to rectify these issues.”
Background points:
• There have been some operational challenges at this site which are unusual and which we are working to address. This includes some staffing challenges in recent weeks which has temporarily impacted service levels
• We have put in place a project team to rectify the issues at the site
• The meal price at this school has not increased in the last two years despite an exponential increase in costs caused by inflation and rising food prices
• All portion sizes adhere to the School Food Standards – there has been no reduction