Kirklees Council School Catering Service has been named Catering Business of the Year at the LACA 2021 Awards for Excellence.
The award aims to give recognition to a catering team or organisation which has made an outstanding contribution to catering for schools in their local area.
LACA, the school food people, revealed the winners of their 2021 Awards for Excellence at the awards dinner at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole. Pam Wilson, Kirsten Catling, Jeanette Cartwright and Cath Holmes attended the event to collect the award on behalf of the service.
Kirklees Council’s ‘Kirklees School Meals’ (KSM) serves 167 schools and over 35,000 pupils across Kirklees. The service demonstrated how they use creativity and initiative to provide a varied, healthy diet and ensure that almost 8,000 vulnerable children get the food they need to live healthily and learn well.
Clr Will Simpson, Cabinet member for culture & greener Kirklees, said: “I am full of pride and admiration for our catering service and the unwavering hard work and commitment they have shown in making sure that the most vulnerable in society were not forgotten during the pandemic.
“Despite staff shortages and supply chain challenges, our catering teams across the borough made sure that children most at risk of becoming isolated from education were provided with not only a daily nutritious meal but also access to IT equipment they needed.
“To win this award at any time would be a fantastic achievement but to win against the backdrop of a pandemic, with all the additional pressures and challenges that has brought, is testament to the incredible resilience and dedication of our hardworking catering teams.”
LACA also marked the contribution made by all frontline workers across the catering sector by awarding the Chair’s Award to all schools in recognition of their hard work and commitment to school meals service during 2020 and 2021.
Anyone interested in a rewarding career with the award winning Kirklees Catering service can find details of current vacancies at Schools catering jobs and careers | Kirklees Council
