Victory for school meals campaigners |
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Roland Rance |
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Following a short, but very vigorous, campaign, unions and parents in Waltham Forest have forced the council to reverse - or at least postpone - plans to close the centralised school meals service. Had the plan gone through, Waltham Forest, which is led by a Labour-Lib Dem coalition, would have been the first borough (but presumably not the last) to make such a cut. Thousands of children could have been left with no midday hot meal; some schools were reported to be negotiating bulk purchases from local sandwich shops. Disgracefully, the council claimed that recent progressive steps, including equal pay for school meals staff and improved nutritional standards in the wake of the Jamie Oliver television series, made it too expensive to provide this service. Having two years ago redefined the shortfall on the school meals budget as a “subsidy”, the council is now intent on reducing this even further. Unison pointed out that the total shortfall on school meals was only £200,000, while councillors’ expenses amount to £900,000 a year and the council has paid “consultants” some £10 million over the past ten years to give advice on how to save money. Campaigners clearly felt that providing the borough’s schoolchildren with a decent and affordable midday meal was a better use of our money, and the campaign, in which school meals’ supervisors played a leading role, attracted wide support. In a step which embarrassed the council, union members visited Jamie Oliver’s east London restaurant, where they were greeted with coffee and cakes, and Oliver issued a supportive statement. Local Labour and Tory MPs, and the borough Public Health Officer, also criticised the council’s decision, while Unison discovered that it had not even been voted on in council, and was thus open to a legal challenge. Faced with this concerted opposition, and following a large demonstration accompanied by many children gleefully banging saucepans, council leader Clyde Loakes appeared on the Town Hall steps to announce a retreat. He announced that the service would continue for the next year at least. Loakes even tried to claim credit for the protest, thanking protesters for coming and insisting - in the face of all evidence - that the reports were unfounded. As a candidate to succeed popular local MP Neil Gerrard, who will retire at the next general election, Loakes is presumably keen, for the moment at least, to appear as a guardian of Labour values - though the subsequent decision that the local party will have an all-women short list has frustrated this hope. Unions and parents, meanwhile, will continue to watch the council’s decision-making very closely. It is likely that next year will see another, better-prepared, attempt to close the school meals service. And we will also continue to oppose any suggestion that the service be funded at the expense of other cuts. Waltham Forest Council is threatening to close the borough’s world-renowned William Morris Gallery, has built a sparkling new library without any books, and has failed to prevent the closure of the borough’s listed Edwardian cinema; we will not allow them to use their defeat on school meals as an excuse for further cuts to other budgets. |
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