Children consume about 30% of their daily calories at school, making school meals a crucial opportunity to improve health. The school food system also supports the local economy by creating jobs and providing thousands of meals daily. Trafford Council’s Public Health team recognised this opportunity.
At the time, Trafford’s catering service was responsible for the majority of school meals provided in the area, with up to 11500 lunches provided daily across 90 schools and employing more than 250 permanent staff and over 50 temporary staff. However, the catering service was facing multiple challenges. Funding was falling behind wage and food inflation. Staff sickness rates were high. Fewer pupils were taking school meals, and more schools were switching to alternative providers as their contracts ended.
Bremner & Co were commissioned to lead an external review of Trafford’s school food provision in the borough, to deliver recommendations that would help improve the food quality and overall viability of the catering offer for the future.
Our Approach
We recognised that many different people are involved in getting good food onto school plates so we spoke to stakeholders across this system to shape recommendations that would genuinely make improvements. This included interviews with head teachers, school business managers, parents, governors, cooks and catering staff. This was accompanied by work within schools to capture the children’s experiences, namely in workshops and lunch time observations. To identify opportunities to increase the nutritional value of the school meals, a nutrition review was conducted by a school food nutrition expert. As part of this work, the menu was evaluated for compliance with the School Food Standards, along with an assessment of its nutritional variety and the extent to which the food was externally processed.
We presented our findings in an interim report to Trafford Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board, and subsequent working priorities were established through reiterative discussions with the catering leadership. Bringing together perspectives from across the school food system, detailed nutritional analysis, and operational data supplied by the catering team allowed us to see how the different parts of the system connect. We identified where strengths can be built on, and where there were opportunities for improvements. Taking a whole-system view enabled us to make recommendations that would not only improve meals in the short term but also strengthen the service for the future.
Key Outcomes
We established a Project Working Group (PWG) to co-develop an action plan. The PWG was representative of this systems approach, including members from multiple Council teams (Public Health and Catering Services, Family and Community support, and Environmental Health). It also included school representatives such as Headteachers, School Business Managers and school governors.
The resulting action plan outlined 4 key areas for improvement; communication (to recognise the work of the school workforce in a campaign and to promote the benefits of school meals to parents), effective governance and coordination, improving school food nutrition, and support and training for catering and school staff. Within each area, together with the PWG we defined clear and measurable actions for the group members to take forward in the short, medium and long term.
By involving those responsible for delivering the recommendations in the PWG, we helped to ensure the development of a strategy that could be feasibly carried forward after our work came to an end.
I really valued the networking opportunities and the chance to connect with others facing similar challenges. Working with the nutritionist was incredibly helpful, and the outcome report gave us a clear sense of progress and where to focus next.
Public Health Commissioner, Trafford Council
Improving children’s health is a key priority for Trafford’s Public Health team, and school food is central to that ambition. This project was a brilliant opportunity to establish a stronger partnership between public health and local authority catering, and for them to gain a better understanding of what’s working well in their school meals offer where the pressure points are, and where there are opportunities for improvement. Capturing children’s voices was central to this process, ensuring their experiences and ideas sat alongside those of the teams planning and delivering school food. We were delighted to be commissioned to support the council on this journey, and proud that the review and resulting co-produced action plan has helped lay the foundations for lasting change.
Rosie Osborne, Senior Research and Projects Officer, Bremner & Co
Our Services
Our review gave Trafford a clearer picture of how their catering service was working and where change was needed. By taking a systems approach, we showed how different parts of the service connected, where strengths could be built on, and where improvements were most urgent. We combined interviews, nutritional analysis, and operational data to give the Council a clear picture of what was working and where gaps remained. Working alongside staff through a Project Working Group, we co-designed an action plan that was practical and widely supported. As an independent partner, we also gave Trafford the confidence to carry the plan forward, linking immediate improvements with a long-term strategy for stronger school food.
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