As food prices start to ratchet up, many children will be going hungry. Councils have the power to offer free school meals to all children – including in school holidays. They could also bring back meals on wheels services for elderly and disabled people, running them in-house instead of pouring money into the bank accounts of private providers.

Save Plymouth CATERed

Ed Evans, Plymouth Socialist Party

The planned liquidation of Plymouth’s school meals provider, CATERed, is a stark example of the human cost of austerity and a system that puts budgets before basic needs. When a public service is forced to operate like a commercial business, it is the community that loses. 

For over a decade, the co-operative has provided 10,000 meals a day to children in 59 schools, prioritising fresh, locally sourced food over profits. Now it faces closure.

Schools in Plymouth receive just £2.66 per meal, far below £3.40 in Wales and £3.30 in Scotland, while food costs have surged by more than 50% in three years, and labour costs by 28%.

The consequences are immediate and severe. CATERed employs 237 staff, many now facing redundancy. Services have already been cut, including meals-on-wheels provision for 150 elderly residents. This represents a wider retreat from public provision, hitting both the young and the vulnerable. The council claims it cannot afford to continue subsidies beyond a £600,000 stopgap. Yet what is affordable is a political choice, one based on refusing to fight for more funding from central government. Plans to hand provision to private contractors threaten a race to the bottom in food quality, wages and conditions.

TUSC candidates say that enough is enough. We call for a needs-based no-cuts budget and our demands to Plymouth council are: 

People Before Profit: A needs-based budget doesn’t start with what the Tory or Labour government allows us to have. It starts with what it costs to feed 10,000 children properly and keep 237 people in good jobs. 

Defy the Liquidators: Instead of winding up the company, the council should use its reserves and its borrowing powers to fully fund the service, while building a mass campaign with the trade unions and parents to demand the missing millions back from Westminster. 

Reject Privatisation: The ‘next step’ for schools is to tender to private providers. We know what that means, lower-quality food for the kids and a ‘race to the bottom’ for staff wages and conditions. 

CATERed staff have spent years going above and beyond, even feeding tens of thousands of children for free in parks during the holidays. It is time the council showed that same level of commitment to them.

Socialist Party members have been part of the Save CATERed campaign since December last year and have got support from local unions, and are still fighting to maintain school dinner quality and against any redundancies.