School Food Trust avoids axe but told to save £1m

The School Food Trust has avoided the axe but must save £1m this year as part of the new coalition Government’s efforts to reduce the UK’s massive fiscal deficit.

Chancellor George Osborne, and his Liberal Democrat deputy, David Laws, today outlined £6.25b of immediate spending cuts, including the scrapping of the Child Trust Fund and a freeze on recruitment to the civil service, most of which will be used to reduce Britain’s £156b debt.

As a result the SFT has been asked to reduce its marketing and communications spend by £1m, which is around 11.5% of the organisation’s £8.65m overall funding from the Government for this financial year. 

Judy Hargadon, SFT chief executive, said: “We are absolutely committed to making our contribution to the savings needed right across the public sector, just as many others will do in the coming months. We will now be working with the Department for Education to develop the detail of how these savings will be made. The reductions in spending may come from delaying some pieces of work, reducing costs on others and indeed cancelling some projects we had planned but not yet started. 

“But we will still be  working hard this year to help schools, local authorities and caterers to promote good school food more effectively, sharing resources and techniques that can save them valuable time and money – with the ultimate goals of encouraging even more children to try a healthy school lunch and making services more viable into the future.”  

A spokesperson from the Department for Education confirmed that it would be working with the SFT to implement the savings, adding that there would still be £1.5m to spend on marketing.

Government set to slash £600m from quangos >> 

School dinners - what if the funding stops? >>

Free school dinners could be extended to an extra 600,000 pupils  >>

E-mail your comments to Janie Stamford here.

If you have something to say on this story or anything else join the debate at Table Talk - Caterer's new networking forum. Go to www.caterersearch.com/tabletalk

Caterersearch.com jobs
Looking for a new job? Find your next job here with Caterersearch.com jobs