SCHOOLKIDS have been denied a free soup and roll throughout the winter months after Labour and Tory councillors teamed up to vote down the proposal.
The SNP group in Stirling put forward the idea as a way of helping those who are not eligible for free school meals get through the toughest winter months when people will be really feeling the pinch after Christmas.
But the £160,000 plan – which would’ve given every secondary school pupil and older primary kids soup and a roll from January to March – was shot down by the minority Labour administration who were supported by Tory councillors.
Just this week, temperatures have plummeted to well below zero degrees across the central belt while the mercury has dropped as low as -15C in the north east.
Councillor Gerry McLaughlan said the group wanted to make a small gesture that would help all strands of society and was disappointed fellow elected members did not throw their weight behind the idea.
He said: “The point I was making is this was for January, February and March when the real bite is going to occur.
“Everyone is going to make their best efforts for their families in the run-up to Christmas, they will make sacrifices, but you get to January and the bills are going to be really rising and the point I was trying to make is this is going to cut across all the strands of society.
“It’s fine saying free school meals are available to people in need and I understand that and it’s good but there’s going to be other folks who aren’t eligible for school meals who are going to be under real financial pressure too.
“So this was at least a token from the council that we were trying to do something for everybody during the toughest part of the year and to be honest it’s rather sad we didn’t decide to run with it. I’m disappointed.”
There are five Labour councillors in Stirling – which make up the administration – who regularly buddy up with the seven Tory councillors to make sure their plans go through against eight SNP, one Green and two independent.
The SNP group had asked officers to look at options for providing a hot meal to all pupils who were not eligible for free school meals back in October.
Officers developed the option of soup and a roll for all young people in secondary schools, but said there was an issue with providing it to primary school pupils “due to the specific nutritional requirements that apply to younger children, the cost of equipment, the recruitment challenges and the very high costs of staffing across so many settings.”
The final recommendation from officers in their report was not to proceed with the idea, but McLaughlan said some still vocally suggested it would be doable during the recent meeting.
McLaughlan said there were no budget issues raised, only that there may be some initial problems with recruitment early on.
He went on to describe the Labour and Tory arrangement as “chaotic”.
“Six or seven years ago I came onto the council through a by-election for 18 months and then lost out at the next elections,” added McLaughlan.
“For the 18 months I was in it was a Labour and Tory formal coalition and, I’ll be candid, for those 18 months I didn’t agree with their policies but at least stuff got done. This time round it’s just chaos.
“The finance and economy committee - the first time it met since the elections was in October and there was only one paper to discuss.
“The only time the capital budget got discussed this year was at December’s council meeting. It’s chaotic.
“You can see the signals taking place during council meetings, they don’t have a common direction. They’re in office but not exercising any power.”
The Labour group said there were a number of additional measures presented in the paper during the meeting including the write-off of school meal debt, which was agreed.
Council leader Chris Kane declined to comment when approached by The National.
