In deciding who to award a local school meals contract to, the council should have placed a firm emphasis on use of local produce, along with quality and value for money, according to the council's main opposition Labour Group.

Its leader, Coun. David Scott, said it was an important economic consideration, but also an environmental one for schools that are keen to reduce their carbon footprints. He commented:

"The evaluation of bids for the contract involved 60% based on cost and 40% based on quality. This is fine in itself, but I feel the council could have been much more explicit about local produce being an important factor in its consideration, under the ‘quality' heading, which had ten sub-sections for detailed evaluation.

"Instead, it has not been given much consideration at all. Exploring how local produce could benefit the local economy would be worthwhile, could be competitive on cost and also feed into teaching in terms of children learning about seasonality and when different foods can be grown.

"There is often the assumption these days that you can buy whatever food you want, whenever you want, but that requires flying produce thousands of miles at a cost to both the environment and our local producers.

"I believe this is a missed opportunity by the council to think beyond cost and to find out whether meals could be a offered in a different way that delivers a range of benefits to all involved.

"We need to make sure that school meals are good quality and value for money. The Executive have to make sure that there are no more price rises".