A STORAGE building is being converted into a new £1.7 million base for Bradford's school meals service.

Work has begun on turning the Bradford Council owned unit on Mitre Court into the new Central Production Unit for the District - which will produce meals for tens of thousands of school children.

The Unit will replace the existing facility in Laisterdyke, off Cutler Heights Lane, which is the Council's third most energy consuming building.

Planning permission for the new facility was granted last March, but the Pandemic has delayed the fit out until late last month.

The Council provides meals for approximately 30,000 school children across the district.

The current site in Laisterdyke is over 35 years old and the Authority says the equipment there, such as large out of date freezers, consume huge amounts of energy.

The Council says the current building is also too big with large amounts of unused space.

Remarkable images of early school meals in Bradford

A spokesman said: "In contrast, the new site will be much smaller and use blast chillers to freeze the food. The chillers will take the temperature of the food from hot down to frozen in a very short time, saving time and money. The blast chillers will also allow energy to be recovered through waste heat being harvested to heat the hot water system. This will save significant amounts of energy, as a lot of hot water is needed for all the cleaning and washing involved in food production. The Council’s Estates and Property department has committed over £60,000 in capital funding towards this energy recovery equipment."

The unit will also use advanced cooking equipment which will reduce cooking times and take up less space. Two new "Bratt Pans" (industrial-size cooking appliances) will do the work of the ten currently being used in the old CPU, as they can cook food in a fraction of the time, which means they can be washed and reused more times in a day.

The current Bratt Pans take three hours to stew diced meat for a Halal curry, while the new pans will pressure cook the meat in 45 minutes.

The design of the unit will include an odour abatement system so that cooking odours and fumes will not have an impact on the surrounding residential areas.

Further down the line, the School Meals Service is looking into the options for lower emission freezer vehicles for the delivery of meals to schools.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Portfolio Holder for Regeneration, Transport and Planning, said: “Our school meals service prides itself on providing tasty and nutritious food to thousands of school children across the district. I’m delighted the new Central Production Unit will both reduce our carbon footprint and improve the efficiency of the school meals service. This is a long-awaited development, which has been delayed by the pandemic, so we are pleased that work can now progress and look forward to seeing the new site in action when it’s completed.”