The Big Interview
COLIN MCINTOSH, HEAD OF SCHOOL MEALS, READING BOROUGH COUNCIL meals w 10
Colin McIntosh won Reading school meals service an EDUcatering Excellence Award in 2012. Six months on, he talks about how the council has continued to be an example of best practice in the industry
hen Colin McIntosh added the role of head of school meals to his job title in 2005, he thought it would be a walk in the park. But what he didn’t realise was just how much needed to change at Reading Borough Council’s school meals service and how
important it was to get it right.
“When I was given
school meals I thought it would be a doddle,” he says. “It’s just a meal an hour a day.” But he soon discovered on visiting a local primary school the vital importance of school meals in Reading.
“I saw a child who was holding her plate to her chest and wouldn’t let them put any food on it. I asked her ‘are you not having lunch?’ and she said no, because she didn’t want the plate to get dirty; she ate out of tins at home. I felt my stomach hit my feet and thought morally I had to do something.” Following this, Colin sought the existing contractor and saw enthusiasm from them to improve the offer to children. Then, following
June 2013 Words MORAG LYALL
a nationally recognised procurement, a new contractor, Chartwells, was in place. “I knew this had to be my focus and I was going to commit to it,” Colin says. Although he readily admits that he doesn’t know the ins and outs of school meals, crediting instead the team around him. “I’m very good at strategy, engagement and looking at the bigger picture and I’m lucky that I have a team of people who know the details. I tell them my idea about something and they make it happen better than I’d hope for.”
It is perhaps this humble attitude that made Colin so surprised to have won Local Authority Caterer of the Year at the EDUcatering Excellence Awards in October 2012. “I was really touched that Chartwells and schools thought that highly of me,” he
recalls. “I don’t really enter the council for anything because I take the view that we’re a public service. That award might have been won by me, but I won it on behalf of 47 schools and four brilliant people who work in the school meals team, as well as an incredible body of members from all parties; because one thing we have in Reading is agreement from all parties on school meals.” Indeed, Colin stresses repeatedly that it is morally right to do something about improving the lives of children of Reading, a city that suffers from incredible deprivation as well as wealth, within just a few hundred yards of each other. “It’s really important to me that children see food as a basic right,” he says.
But Colin and his team’s achievements go beyond just having the right attitude. In the time that Colin has been working on the £8m school meals contract he has helped Reading achieve a 25% increase in take-up to 40%. And interest in school meals has increased since winning the EDUcatering Award, thanks to the considerable amount of PR it attracted. Colin appeared on regional TV and in the local press and he was able to relaunch a DVD on the
for school A moral obligation
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