A RAFT of recommendations has been produced as Dorset County Council bids to learn lessons from the school meals fiasco that dogged the start of the school year.

The council and contracted catering firm Chartwells came under fire as a number of schools failed to have their meals delivered or experienced issues with late delivery and part orders at the start of the autumn term.

Last October the council’s audit and scrutiny committee quizzed representatives of Chartwells and the authority’s own officers involved in the project in a bid to understand where the issues had arose.

An action plan containing series of nine recommendations has been drafted arising out of that meeting and they will go before the council’s cabinet next Wednesday.

It also includes updates on how the recommendations are being addressed.

The recommendations include having set criteria to determine what is a high value contract carrying significant risk and referring them to cabinet as well as identifying a single portfolio holder, director and/or service head to be responsible for successful delivery.

The third recommendation states that assessment criteria for commissioning and contract judgements needs to be ‘transparent, comprehensive and well understood’ while the needs to signpost dissatisfied interested parties in the right direction is also identified.

The action plan also states portfolio holders must be key in commissioning and contract decisions while all stakeholders should accept responsibility for monitoring successful implementation.

Further recommendations concern the role and responsibilities for implementation, the commissioning and contracting process and the need for a clear communications plan.

The report going before the cabinet states that a number of the actions identified under each recommendation have already been fully or partially carried out.

Chairman of the audit and scrutiny committee Cllr Trevor Jones said he was satisfied with the council’s response to the recommendations that had arisen out of the meeting with Chartwells last October.

He said: “The recommendations and action plan have gone before the audit and scrutiny committee and we made some amendments but overall we are very content with the outcome.

“Lessons have been learned and the county council has responded positively to our criticisms and has faced up to the responsibility on it to make improvements to the way these things are handled in the future.”

Chartwells was responsible for delivering 11,000 school meals a day under the terms of the £3.5million contract and problems first arose when its production unit at Ferndown was hit by a fire in June.

A temporary facility was provided at Bovington Park but the site proved problematic.

At the audit and scrutiny committee meeting managing director Robin Mills issued a public apology to the schools, parents and governors affected.