DORSET County Council chiefs have admitted they DID know about a fire which led to last week’s school meals fiasco.

Cabinet member for education Toni Coombs claimed last week that catering firm Chartwells had failed to inform the authority before the start of term about the blaze which destroyed its kitchen in the Ferndown Industrial Estate.

“We were told [about the fire] at the start of term. They hadn’t informed the council,” she said.

However, when questioned by the Daily Echo yesterday she backtracked, claiming she had “forgotten” that the council had in fact been informed about the fire in June.

“We were made aware of the fire on June 17,” she said. “It was my error, I have been in a lot of meetings. I didn’t have time to go back and double-check the facts. My memory was not as it should have been, I hold my hands up to that.”

Today, Annette Brooke, the Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, has said Cllr Coombs must consider her position

Cllr Coombs said the council then provided temporary kitchen facilities for Chartwells at Bovington Park, which were “not up to the task”, but was given “assurances” by the firm that it would deliver the contract.

She said no further checks were made by the council as it was the “responsibility of the contractor” to inform the council and schools if it failed to deliver the service and the first the authority heard of last week’s problems was when schools rang up to complain.

Nevertheless, she said she believed the firm’s assurances had been given “in good faith at the time”, although the authority will look at “asking for compensation” in future.

“Only five per cent of schools are affected by this,” she said. “A lot have had a very successful start to the contract with Chartwells, it is not as if the whole thing rolled over.”

The Daily Echo was also misinformed by the council last week that the fire had taken place in August – in fact the blaze, which started in the adjacent Metal Finishings factory in Haviland Road – occurred on June 14.

Staff at the latter firm said they believed the neighbouring unit was not in use at that time.

Cllr Coombs also said she had not contacted the Echo to correct the errors in her account due to a lack of “media interest” and a desire to “not exacerbate things any further”.

The Daily Echo requested an interview with Chartwells boss Robin Mills but has received no further contact from the firm.

'Crisis' meeting confirms fire started the problems

PROBLEMS with the hot school meal service became evident when term started across Dorset earlier this month.

In the first week of the school year, staff at schools across Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch were forced to buy takeaways and supermarket food when meals failed to turn up.

Teachers said they were unable to get hold of Chartwells, with at least one school so unhappy with the quality of the meal delivered they refused to serve it to children.

While some schools were problem-free going into the second week of term, there are still 23 schools in Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset that will receive only packed lunches for weeks to come.

A ‘crisis’ meeting was held between Dorset County Council and the company, which confirmed the problems had started when a fire destroyed their kitchen facility this summer.

Following the meeting Cllr Toni Coombs said the school meal supplier ‘bore the blame’ for the fiasco.

Chartwells obtained access to new facilities in Poole at the end of August and work is under way to bring them into use – an outcome expected during the October half term.

Councillor Dedman brands fiasco as ‘disgraceful’

A DORSET councillor has branded the school meals fiasco “disgraceful” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

Lesley Dedman yesterday told members of the audit and scrutiny committee she believed the Chartwells contract had been poorly managed.

The authority has claimed it was given “assurances” by Chartwells that the contract would be delivered successfully using temporary facilities in Bovington and after this no further checks were made.

A spokesman said yesterday: “The onus is on the contractor to tell us if they have any issues in delivering the contract.”

Speaking to the Daily Echo, Cllr Dedman said she believed the authority had “fallen down” on risk management.

“When you are running a contract with your sub-contractors you usually chase them up,” she said.

“We have endless risk assessments in local government, it will be interesting to see what risk assessments were carried out in this case.”

Cllr Dedman, who is also a Christchurch councillor, said she was angry that teachers and helpers at Mudeford Infants School were forced to buy food for the pupils themselves last week.

“It is disgraceful that they had to go out and buy sandwiches from Tesco,” she said.

“They weren’t informed that there was a problem even an hour after the food was meant to arrive.

“In my view the contract has not been handled as well as it should have been.”

The committee has agreed to investigate and prepare a list of council officials who will be called to account.

At yesterday’s meeting Cllr Dedman said: “The failure to deliver the school meals was exacerbated by the failure to contact the customers.

“These are big risks that surely should have been picked up by anybody who put out the contract.”

The audit and scrutiny committee will discuss progress at its next meeting, due to be held on October 16.