A NEW provider will soon be serving up freshly cooked meals to county schoolchildren.

Gloucestershire County Council has awarded a new contract to Caterlink to provide healthy school meals to primary and special schools, which will begin in July 2015 and run until July 2020.

The council has been working on behalf of schools to negotiate with providers of school dinners over the past few months to provide dinner menus that have as fresh and wholesome foods as possible.

From September 2015, Caterlink will start serving meals accredited to the Food for Life Gold Standard to 185 primary schools, an equivalent of 17,000 daily school meals.

Caterlink already provides school meals in a number of local authorities.

The company was chosen by the council because of its commitment to making meals from the best quality fresh ingredients and because food is sourced from local suppliers.

The successful online payment scheme ‘ParentPay’, introduced in 2009 will continue to be used. The system enables parents to make online payment for school meals.

Cllr Paul McLain, cabinet member for children and young people at Gloucestershire County Council, said: “It’s important that our primary and special schools can provide healthy school meals to enable children to grow and develop properly.

“We have worked closely with schools to ensure the new contract will continue to provide school meals that are good quality, meet nutritional standards and offer value for money with an emphasis on local produce.”

The school meals contract is entirely funded through parents paying for meals and from free school meal funding. The current cost of a school meal is £2.20