The opening on the outskirts of Helensburgh last Autumn of the elite supermarket Waitrose’s 6th store in Scotland is costing Argyll and Bute Council dear.
In a patter of behaviour familiar to any of us who, during our schooling, has the same opportunity, pupils from the adjacent new Hermitage Academy campus, with its 1,300 strong cohort, are swerving their school dinners in favour of buying goodies in Waitrose.
It is estimated that this is costing the council £2,000 a week, or £80,000 per year.
The council confirmed the loss, already £35,000, to the media earlier this week but insisted that there is still a ‘healthy demand’ for school meals, that the meals service ‘is sustainable and will be maintained’.
Asked about this situation, local councillor and former council leader, James Robb, identified an issue here of serious concern but below the radar.
He says that the peer pressure of social inclusion, which leads pupils to act as a herd so as not to be seen to be ‘different’ [the real dread of the young] may push some pupils into unsustainable spending.
Pupils eligible for free school meals are,mercifully, no longer identifiable to their peers in the universal use of the preloaded Scotcard to pay for dinners.
Councillor Robb points out though, that going to Waitrose instead requires ‘real cash’, inevitably producing some situations where struggling families who will not want to see their youngsters left behind by their Waitrosing friends, now face substantial and unanticipated additional weekly outgoings.
