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LACA chair makes Public Sector Catering’s ‘most influential’ list

01 Dec 2022
Brad Pearce, chair of LACA, has been named as one of the Top 20 ‘most influential’ by Public Sector Catering Magazine.

When appointed chair of LACA, the school food people, Brad vowed to champion the great work school caterers do up and down the country.

At this year’s LACA Main Event he discussed the results of the ParentPay, Cypad and LACA research that highlighted the views of more than 300,000 parents on school meals. He has also played a key role in the LACA Cost of Living research that found 91% of members are still experiencing food shortages or substitutions.

Brad recently celebrated National School Meals Week (7-11 November), calling on the Government to increase the funding per meal for both universal infant free school meals (currently £2.41) and free school meals (currently £2.47) to address the cost of living crisis.

In his day-to-day job Brad is the managing director of CATERed in Plymouth, a school food cooperative owned by 60-plus schools in the city plus the council.

He said: "Honoured to be on the list with such great industry colleagues, committed to making sure public sector food service the very best it can be & supporting the frontline staff & industry to continue to deliver a first-class service in very difficult times."

LACA represent 300 local authorities and together they provide more than three million meals a day in 27,000 schools served by 110,000 staff.

The Public Sector Catering ‘most influential’ list also included MP Sharon Hodgson, former PSC100 chair Andy Jones, Andy Kemp, Chris Packham as well as Tanya and Nadim Laperouse.