AFP, published on Tuesday February 25, 2020 at 10:18 am
School meals are expensive for French municipalities, whether managed directly or entrusted to a provider via an often unfavorable contract, and that does not guarantee equal access to the canteen, regrets the Cour des comptes on Tuesday.
In its annual report, the Court examined the management of the collective catering of 80 municipalities and local public establishments, representing 3.9 million inhabitants and 28.8 million meals provided in 2017.
It turns out that “despite its high and variable cost from one community to another”, collective catering – 85% in primary education, but also for early childhood, homes, carrying meals for people elderly – “rarely subject to a consolidated financial assessment”.
In the absence of a “global vision”, local authorities “often focus their savings efforts on the purchase of raw materials or meals, the costs of which are most easily measurable even if they contribute on average only 23% of the price of comes back total. “
They sometimes adopt a management method “with questionable efficiency”, then rarely reviewed: last year, only 8% of the managers of municipalities and public establishments of inter-municipal cooperation (EPCI) with more than 30,000 inhabitants wondered about a modification.
Direct “management”, where the community manages the service on its own (59% of the total), is costly in investment, complex in terms of human resources management, standards and regulations, revenue collection – with a rate average non-payment of 6.4%.
Some communities therefore delegate this service to the private sector. But the contracts are then “frequently unbalanced” in favor of the four giants which capture 75% of the turnover of the sector, judges the Court. In addition, communities lose control of the meal production process, while assuming the losses linked to non-payment and most of the operating risk.
Finally, the prices adapted to disadvantaged groups are not synonymous with “equal access to the canteen”: the attendance rate by pupils of primary schools in priority education zones is 10 to 15 points lower than that of pupils of other schools, despite almost systematic social tariffs.
The Court recommends developing “synthetic national indicators” to assess the achievement of the objectives of the food law (“Egalim”) targeting 50% of “organic, quality and sustainable products” in canteens by 2022.
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