THE catering company behind Dorset’s £3.5m school meals contract fiasco has refused to give any assurances that its service will improve after half-term.

Head teachers resorted to ordering takeaway pizza and buying sandwiches when Chartwells failed to deliver promised hot school meals to infants across the conurbation at the beginning of September.

Meals were also delivered late and some were inedible.

Chartwells, part of the Compass Group, blamed a fire next door to its Ferndown kitchens in June for the problems and now has new facilities on an industrial estate in Poole from where the meals will be sent out from Monday.

Previously they had been sending the meals down from Nottingham.

But when the Dorset Echo asked to take a look at the new facilities and talk to the boss about how the service will be delivered, Compass refused. Spokeswoman Rachel Branigan said: “There is not going to be the opportunity to do that. As I’m sure you can appreciate, everyone is very busy.”

And when asked if the company could give any assurances that the service would be better, she said: “We will not be saying anything else.”

But the Compass Group repeated comments made after Chartwells MD Robin Mills spoke at a meeting of Dorset County Council’s Audit and Scrutiny committee earlier this month. The statement said: “We take our commitment to service delivery very seriously and regret the concern and inconvenience which has been caused to schools, pupils and their parents.

“We are now delivering a consistent service to all schools and, from Monday we will resume a hot meal service to those 23 schools that have been receiving packed lunches on a temporary basis.”

The whole affair was investigated by the scrutiny committee and the council’s cabinet is now considering its response.

Dorset-based catering boss Declan O’Toole of Forerunner has criticised Dorset County Council’s decision to give the school meals contract to one supplier.

He said smaller firms were deliberately excluded from the tendering process and branded the issue “a shambles.”

Lunch failures a 'disgrace'

THE Compass Group is a huge organisation with a £1.8 billion annual turnover providing catering, facilities management and cleaning services.

Amid the problems, furious Mid Dorset MP Annette Brooke criticised Dorset’s Cabinet member for education and communications, Cllr Toni Coombs for her handling of the issue. Cllr Coombs claimed she had “forgotten” about the fire.

Cllr Mike Brooke from Borough of Poole described the contract failures as a “disgrace.”