Food inflation is driving Fife council school meal budgets 'through the roof'

Fife Council nurseries have already reduced their menus to two choices from August 2024, and scrutiny councillors were told last week that services are looking “very closely” at other school menus for primary and secondary schools.

Tariq Ditta, Fife’s head of Facilities Management Services, told councillors last week that school catering is one of the service’s biggest challenges.

Altogether, Facilities Management has gone more than £1 million over budget, about half of which is down to school catering.

“Moving forward, the biggest single problem we have at the moment is with budget overspending,” he said.

Low food sales at high schools are part of the problem. Mr Ditta said that research from Beath and Lochgelly High Schools last year, 2023, showed that pupils are no longer purchasing a full meal at lunchtime.

“They were purchasing snack-type items and, on average, only spending about £1.15 for each of the items. That’s one of the reasons we [didn’t meet our sales] targets,” he said.

Secondly, he said food inflation has gone “through the roof,” impacting council finances.

Mr Ditta said: “Prices go up almost immediately, but take forever to come back down. So we’ve got the challenge of increased inflation costs. We are actually looking very closely at our menu offerings.”

School catering at nursery level has already been reviewed, and menu options were reduced from three to two in August.

Mr Ditta thinks these options are not only “better targeted” but emphasised that they also reduce catering costs and food waste.

Fife Council, like all local authorities, has an obligation to serve school meals that meet certain nutritional requirements for students, but Mr Ditta said there is some leeway within those guidelines.

For example, he said pasta meals cost about 9p per portion while a steak pie costs more than £1.30 per portion.

“Every one pence increase we have in food cost results in about £47,000 aggregate increase in food cost. Those are the challenges we face,” he said.

Mr Ditta said his team will be looking closely at menu offerings and encouraging more people to purchase meals at school.

The team has already had some success with increasing sales this year – up 14% from last year – but they will keep working to expand food options for morning breaks and other meal times.