Citation
(2003), "The Future in Perspective, Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) National Conference 2003, The Hilton Birmingham Metropole, July 3-4 2003", Nutrition & Food Science, Vol. 33 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/nfs.2003.01733fac.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2003, MCB UP Limited
The Future in Perspective, Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) National Conference 2003, The Hilton Birmingham Metropole, July 3-4 2003
The Future in Perspective, Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) National Conference 2003, The Hilton Birmingham Metropole, July 3-4 2003
LACA members are usually responsible for catering all aspects of social service care. Thus they cover catering for schools, nursing and residential homes, children’s nurseries, delivered meals, hostels for refugees and young people as well as leisure centres.
One of the main issues they face is a limited budget for food provision. At their annual conference the following topics were covered:
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“The future of local government”. What are the Government’s plans for the future of local government and where is fragmentation of local authorities taking us? What will be the future challenges for public services and what role will local authority catering play?
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“Schools – the great power shift?”. A world where schools are no longer just centres of education but thriving businesses in control of their own services and their own destinies? Is this the Governments future vision? The DfES explains the implications of key areas of the Education Act 2002.
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“The big freeze for school meals”. Discussed frozen school meals in Sweden. It was interesting to note that all school meals are free in Sweden.
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“Being the best in the public sector – who will notice?”. Best value continues to evolve and develop throughout the UK but its overall aim is to achieve quality, value for money services in an environment of continuous improvement.
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Food – back to the future?”. The Government wants public organisations to increase the use of organic produce. To reduce the high level of imported organic food, it has set a target of 70 per cent to be sourced from UK farmers by 2010. It also wants to see the public sector begin to source some ingredients from organic sources.