School catering services

Description

The Wellspring Academy network is a progressive and growing network of mostly primary schools and special or alternative academies located predominantly in the Barnsley, Leeds, Grimsby and Lincolnshire areas. The requirement is initially to provide catering services to the Leeds and Barnsley cluster of schools. Other schools may then be added to the contract as and when existing contracts come to an end or additional schools join the network within the contract term. Schools may choose not to opt in to the Trust wide contract and continue with their existing arrangement. The existing provision is delivered through a mix of local authority, private contractor and in-house delivery models with new schools also opening with no current provision as identified further within this notice. The Leeds and Barnsley networks consist of the following schools. — Oakhill Primary Academy: Barnsley. — Oakwell Rise Academy: Barnsley. — The Forest Academy: Barnsley. — Greenacre School: Barnsley. — Springwell Learning Community: Barnsley. — Victoria Primary Academy: Leeds. — Ebor Gardens Primary Academy: Leeds. — Springwell Leeds Oakwood: Leeds. — Springwell Leeds East: Leeds (opening 1.2018). — Springwell Leeds South: Leeds (opening 1.2018). — Springwell Leeds North: Leeds (opening 9.2018). Numbers catered for on-site range from 12 to 268 with some sites have a cook on site and some a delivered service. It should be noted that the schools have different term dates and provide facilities / catering during school holidays. The contract will be for a period of up to 3 years for each school, starting from 1.1.2018 with an option to extend on an annual basis up to a maximum of 5 years. The Trust currently has 15 academies across 42 sites and expects rapid growth over the next 2 years, resulting in around 25 to 30 academies within the Trust. If the catering provider exceeds expectations within this contract, the Trust would consider extending the contract to include other academies across the region. Objectives: The Trust requires a fully outsourced catering solution and has identified the following 3 key objectives for school meals provision: 1. Develop high quality, popular meal service arrangements for all students and staff to be offered consistently on a Trust-wide basis. 2. Ensure compliant services that meet the key daily needs of students in sustaining learning and promoting wellbeing within environments that encourage positive social experiences during meal times. 3. Ensure that best value is achieved for participating Academies. The Trust expects to benefit from the expected economies of scale of contracting out the service as a network of schools. Menus and Nutrition: 1. All meals should be cooked from scratch using fresh ingredients. As far as possible, local, seasonal and organic ingredients should be used. Meals should include both raw and cooked vegetables where appropriate. 2. Meals should include as a minimum a meat hot dish; a vegetarian hot dish; a vegetable side dish; fresh bread or rolls; a jacket potato with various fillings and a pudding. In addition to this, a salad bar should be provided each day. 3. Our pupils are likely to have a range of other dietary requirements, including vegan, gluten free, allergies, dairy and wheat intolerance; a need for halal or kosher food; etc. Suppliers should set out how they will provide menus that facilitate meeting these requirements. Please note: a number of our schools provide for children with varying degrees of physical, social and emotional special needs. As some pupils in our Special Schools have medical needs it is of particular importance that they are provided with personalised e.g. meals which contain no protein. As a minimum we require the food to meet with the National Food Standards in Schools. However, we require meals to be healthy, balanced and nutritious. Suppliers may wish to provide nutritional analysis of regular dishes to demonstrate this, either as part of the tender or through the year Staffing TUPE will apply. A number of catering staff are members of the Local Government Pension Scheme. The successful contractor will be expected to apply for Admitted Body Status to the relevant administering authority contract value 2 600 000GBP approximately (3 years), excluding Springwell sites opening 2018. Further information is provided in the procurement documents.