My hectic year continued in November, though the nice thing was that this month my travel seemed to be restricted to local visits and London ones.
National School Meals week kicked things off and I found myself outside the House of Commons serving lunch to some MP’s and the odd peer. It was fantastic the David Laws the Education Minister joined us, he has been so supportive of the school food plan and all we have achieved over the last 12 months or so. It was lovely to see Sharon Hodgson too who chairs the APPG on school food.
The next day (November 5th), we attended the Food for Life Partnership seminar at City Hall before returning to the House of Commons where we had a LACA exhibition. David Laws announced some very exciting news at the FFLP seminar, we have been in discussion with the Department for Education about sponsoring a special award at the LACA Awards for Excellence next July and they have agreed to do it! I think this really shows how far LACA have come over the last few years when it comes to influence at a political level. My next trip to London was on the 12th of November to meet Chris Brockhurst from the DfE to discuss the details and criteria for the award.
The quarterly LACA board meeting was on November 16th and 17th, you can see the board reports in the ‘reports’ section of the members area so log in and have a look.
20th of November was a special day for me. We raised over £6,000 for my chair’s charity at the main event this year and I had the pleasure of handing over the cheque to the team at the Black country Food Bank, they do amazing work and I’d encourage you all to visit their website by clicking here.
My last task for November was to pop down to the Academies at the NEC to have a look around and to catch up with a couple of the Partners with LACA who were exhibiting there.