Is Camden Council going cold on pensioners’ meals on wheels?

Published: 2nd June, 2011
by TOM FOOT

PENSIONERS say a decision to axe Camden’s hot “meals on wheels” delivery service means they are being treated worse than criminals.

Elderly people in the borough have reacted angrily to news that Camden Council will not renew its contract with Fresh Community Meals from December 1.

Instead, the Town Hall want to send frozen meals to homes – and encourage carers and family members to help warm them up.

It comes at a time when most of Camden’s lunch clubs for older people are being closed because of funding cuts.

Ernestine Lasalle, who lives in Kilburn, said: “I know there have to be some cuts, but children are given hot food in school and so are criminals in prisons. So why not us? We are being treated worse than criminals.”

Ms Lasalle said she had been a member of the Labour Party since 1948 but was now – at the age 96 – considering cancelling her subscription.

She added: “They go on about how there’s no money, but I joined the Labour Party after the war when there was a huge deficit and look what they did then – they created the NHS and the welfare state.”

Camden Unison has warned against the Labour council’s decision to cut the hot food service at a time when the lunch clubs are also being axed.

Former roadsweeper Tom McDonald, who celebrated his 74th birthday with his lunch club friends at Vivian Court in West Hampstead on Monday, said: “They are telling us to get these damn pre-packed meals. But they are not nutritious. 

“The other thing is that we’ll have the Fire Brigade down every week if you get old ­people cooking in their rooms.”

There are dozens of homebound residents in Vivian Court who rely on the hot food delivery service. 

Pensioner “Jimmy” had forgotten to come down for his meal when the New Journal dropped in to the lunch club on Friday, but his friends took him up a plate instead. 

Unison chairman George Binette said: “Unison believes the demise of the meals service would remove an important early warning system and runs a serious risk of tragic consequences.”

In 2008, the council outsourced its meals on wheels service – known as “community meals” – to the Fresh CM on a three-year contract.

At the time, 320 meals were delivered daily. This has fallen to 206 and the contract will not be renewed.

In April a council report said that the “quality of chilled and frozen meals available through specialist suppliers and supermarkets is now generally considered higher than through the traditional meals delivery service”.

It added that in other boroughs “the overall experience of ceasing the hot meal delivery service was positive”.

Social workers have already begun advising pensioners to make their own food arrangements.

A council spokesman said this was “worrying” and stressed the Town Hall would hold a thorough public consultation about setting up a replacement service.

He added: “Far from taking away a service, this is a case of a contract with a provider ending and the council looking to modernise the service so that elderly people have a greater choice and variety of hot meals on a daily basis.”