School meals

Tweet The news this week about the extent to which school meals are still failing our children should surprise no one. I expect the situation to get worse in coming years as councils attempt to tighten their belts.

Carmarthenshire haas already decided to increase the charge for providing school meals by 5p above inflation for each of the next two years, whilst cutting the cost of providing those meals by 1p per meal. (Need I say that these are all misleadingly described as 'efficiency savings'?) I'm sure that they won't be the only authority looking to do something similar.

The response of some, according to the Western Mail story, has been to call for more regulation to standardise school food across Wales. I'm sure that could be done - if we really want yet more centralisation of decision-taking.

But, as I've pointed out several times recently, let's not pretend that continued standardisation and increasing central control has anything to do with local democracy.