Gloucestershire County Council

ParentPay case study

What were the authority’s goals?

As well as taking a fresh approach to the food served, the Council wanted
to allow parents to pay online. The goal was to reduce the time spent on
meal income administration and to help increase meal uptake.

Stephen Hetenyi of Gloucestershire County Council said: “Many of our
schools had reported that a number of parents wanted to pay online.”
Stephen added: “It was also important that meal numbers and FSM could
also be managed effectively and to ensure that cash-based families could
still book and pay for school meals.”

Why was ParentPay chosen?

Stephen was impressed with the way the ParentPay solution fully
met Gloucestershire’s needs.

Stephen commented: “ParentPay were the only provider with a socially inclusive payment option through PayPoint combined with the capability to record and reconcile cash and cheque payments. ParentPay could also manage other school income as well as being a centralised meal management solution for the County.”

Stephen added: “ParentPay’s record in Croydon, where meal uptake had
increased from 9,500 to 14,000 meals a day, proved ParentPay had an
excellent track record.”

The results

The results have been impressive; new healthier menus and the convenience of an online payment and meal management facility have combined to help increase meal uptake by 26%. Gloucestershire staff, have reported that over 70% of meal income is now being collected online saving an invaluable amount of time for both school and Council staff.