by Paul O'Brien
Saturday 29 July 2006
Visted Julie Pickering, Head of FM at Rochdale, Julie is someone who I have known for a couple of years and has a good insight into local government generally. We discuss over lunch the impact of Government proposals on Catering on local authority budgets and how the Government, corporate centre of authorities and the public need to understand that things have a cost.
It never ceases to amaze me the hatred of Jamie Oliver amongst education catering staff. I liked the Jamie Oliver programme in the fact that it raised awareness of an undervalued local government service, it brought some extra funding and new facilities, I also liked the idea of fresh food being cooked and enhanced nutirent standards. I didn't like the damage done to existing high performing local authority caterers, the drop in take up amongst children and the lack of knowledge all round that implementing change takes time.
