East Ayrshire Council Continues to Put Local Food First
East Ayrshire Council’s Catering Services are celebrating as they have maintained their Food for Life Served Here gold award for another year, ensuring that pupils in 55 premises in the area continue to enjoy fresh, local and sustainable school meals.
The Council’s school meals service is recognised widely for taking a lead in providing high-quality and sustainable meals. It began the process of FFLSH certification prior to the award launching in Scotland and was the first local authority area to achieve the Gold FFLSH award, when the scheme was first introduced in 2008.
Since 2008, East Ayrshire Council has been putting more good food on school plates, as Scotland’s first local authority to hold the Food for Life Served Here Gold award. With a strong commitment to fresh, local and sustainable food, they are true trailblazers in showing what is possible for school meals. Pupils enjoy meals including homemade soup, pork sausages with creamy mashed potato, chickpea curry and rice, and Scottish salmon stir fry.
The Council wanted to go beyond taking a purely commercial approach to school meals by taking serious account of the health, environmental, economic and educational benefits of good food. The FFLSH framework offered a national standard against which to benchmark its work in transforming menus.
Food for Life Served Here Award holders can demonstrate that a minimum of 75 per cent of dishes are freshly prepared from unprocessed ingredients. Meals are also free from undesirable trans fats, sweeteners, additives and all genetically modified ingredients. Catering teams also use free range eggs, higher welfare meat and ingredients from sustainable and ethical sources.
At Gold level, award holders like East Ayrshire Council spend at least 15 per cent of the ingredients budget for their service on organic produce, source a significant proportion of ingredients from UK producers, and take further steps to make healthy eating easier.
East Ayrshire Council has built strong networks with local suppliers including A&A Spittal, a family farm in Auchinleck, Cumnock, who supply them with fruit and vegetables. They started supplying East Ayrshire more than 15 years ago and have been able to expand as their working relationship strengthened.
“Buying local is something that I feel really passionately about,” says A&A Spittal’s Alistair Spittal. “If you’re a local supplier and you can rely on a three- or four-year contract from a local authority, it makes a huge difference to your business. It means you can employ more people into more stable positions. It becomes sensible to invest in training your staff so they can rise up the ranks within your business.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to achieve for the local community, and the truth is we wouldn’t be able to employ so many young people from the area if we didn’t have the schools contract.”
Other local suppliers include Mossgiel Organic Farm who supply organic milk to schools across the local authority, as well as Corrie Mains Farm who supply free-range eggs, both of who which have seen business growth during their partnership with East Ayrshire Council.
As East Ayrshire Council’s partnerships with local businesses show, the Food for Life Served Here Gold award is a powerful framework for local authorities to deliver school meals are good for health, the environment and the economy. And those partnerships are having a direct positive impact on school pupils, who are eating fresh, local and sustainable school meals each day.
Councillor Graham Barton, East Ayrshire Council’s Spokesperson for Planning, Property and Environment, said: “I recently joined the young people of The Robert Burns Academy for a school lunch, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all. It was a great opportunity to chat with the young people and also the Catering Services team to learn more about schools meals and the importance of our food being nutritious, sustainable and locally sourced.
“The positive impact on our children and young people, and their families is clear from our annual survey but the impact on local businesses can’t be underestimated. In addition, to supporting local businesses to invest and expand, there has been a significant environmental impact, for example, by using Mossgiel Milk and milk dispensers in all schools instead of bottles, 4,024,209 pieces of single-use plastic were saved from landfill in just two years.
“East Ayrshire Council is rightly very proud of our Catering Services and our school meals. I am delighted we have retained the Food for Life Served Here Gold award for another year.”
Sarah Duley, Head of Food, Food for Life Scotland, said: “Congratulations to East Ayrshire Council for renewing their Food for Life Served Here Gold Award for another year. This is a huge achievement and shows that staff are dedicated to providing pupils with a hot, nutritious meal that’s healthy, freshly prepared and sustainably produced. We are delighted to recognise East Ayrshire Council for continuing to put more good food on school plates and for supporting Scotland’s food businesses and Good Food Nation ambitions.”