SCHOOL dinners in Kirklees have won a prestigious food award.

Kirklees Catering (KC), the provider of school meals in this area, has been awarded the Soil Association’s Food for Life Bronze Catering Mark.

KC won the prize for its commitment to serving healthy, nutritious and climate-friendly school meals. The bronze award requires 75% of the food served to be freshly prepared and seasonal.

Representatives received the prize from celebrity food writer and TV presenter Stefan Gates at the northern awards ceremony in Manchester recently.

Kirklees Cabinet member Clr Shabir Pandor said: “This award enables us to demonstrate to our customers, parents and schools our commitment to delivering good quality, healthy and freshly prepared food.

“This is helping us to continually increase the number of pupils taking school meals in Kirklees resulting in us being in the top 25% of local authorities in the UK for school meals uptake, as reported by the School Food Trust.”

Kirklees Catering is the council’s meal provider in schools and other council buildings. Currently the service provides meals in 186 schools across Kirklees. It serves 18,500 meals each day in primary, middle and special schools, with a further 16,000 meals a day in high schools.