Council faces £360k bill to axe school meal service

Leicestershire County Council said it could face costs of hundreds of thousands of pounds to wind up its school meal service.

The Reform UK-led authority currently runs a company - Leicestershire Traded Services (LTS) - which has a contract to provide catering to 117 schools, serving about 20,000 children, but plans to cease the service at the end of this academic year.

In a meeting on Wednesday, councillors were told the service made a profit of £101,000 for the authority in 2025/26, its first since the Covid-19 pandemic, but that it was not sustainable in the long term.

They were also told the "exit costs" related to staff redundancy were expected to be £360,000.

The council said about 800 people work for the school food service and, while most of them would be transferred to companies taking over the contracts, 13 could be made redundant.

Opposition councillors criticised the authority's decision to axe the service given its success in the last financial year.

Michael Mullaney, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the council, said: "I'm against the council withdrawing from the school meals service.

"It's a high-quality service and even though it had been losing money after Covid [it] had been turned round - it had made a profit.

"It would have probably made more money if we had not announced last year that it was closing because that made schools look elsewhere, leading to a decline in numbers.

"It's a disappointing decision to end a very good service."

Tory opposition group leader Deborah Taylor said: "I objected to it as well. I thought it was something we should have continued to do."

Richard Hunt, the authority's head of catering, hospitality and country parks, said every effort had been made to minimise redundancies by redeploying staff to other jobs in the authority or to new operators.

He also said that all the schools contracted to the council had found new firms to provide meals from September.

The council's director of corporate resources, Declan Keegan, said: "That £100,000 profit isn't a sustainable profit. Schools were continuing to look elsewhere.

"All we're really waiting for is for the losses to come."

Cabinet lead member for finance and resources, Harrison Fowler, said the service had been high quality but the profit made in 2025/26 was a red herring given a trend of schools seeking cheaper alternatives.

"It just wasn't a viable thing for us to do and it wasn't a viable thing for schools to do.

"We were just following market direction, basically.

"That's why we did it. I know it was unpopular, but that's the truth."

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