NHS budgets simply do not stretch to gourmet catering in hospitals

sir – I worked in hospital catering for 33 years, 25 of those in management roles. Every year I overspent my budget. If I didn’t, it would have been cut the following year. I was never once asked by management to submit sample costed menus for approval.

There is also the matter of pay. Hospital catering managers and staff earn about 20 per cent less than those with similar responsibilities in the private sector. So how can the NHS expect to attract the best people?

Many hospitals and their kitchens are also big, old and badly designed, with out-of-date, inefficient equipment. Food trolleys have to travel a long way to the wards. It is just not possible to send out meals for about 1,000 people within an hour and have those meals arrive in top quality.

That said, there are hospitals with very good standards of catering. What is needed is an in-depth review of these in order to ensure that others are managed in the same way. Michael Hartley

Kendal, Cumbria sir – Food plays an enormous part in the healing process. I once had a friend in the Rome Policlinico, a public hospital, where meals are worked out by a clinical dietitian to suit each patient’s condition. Prue Leith, who has been brought in to advise on NHS menus (report, August 23), is a gourmet specialist but not the right person to reform hospital meals. Wendy Field

Hayling Island, Hampshire

sir – While delicious and nutritious food is an aid to recovery, hospitals are not hotels and have many demands on their budgets. So why not allow patients to pay for better food?

If I were stuck in my local hospital, I would be happy to pay for deliveries from the brasserie down the road. Christopher Boyle

Milton Keynes

sir – Prue Leith could improve hospital food in no time by getting the NHS to mandate two changes.

First, require that management in every hospital must eat from the day’s patients’ menu. The food quality would rise within days.

Second, institute a modest charge for meals that represents the saving that patients make by not having to buy food at home. Philip Collings

Henley-on-thames, Oxfordshire

sir – The prime duty and purpose of the NHS is to treat and cure physical ailments, not to provide three free meals a day.

Those who are working or who have sufficient financial means to feed ourselves at home should pay for meals while in hospital. Imagine the transformation in quality if patients were asked to contribute £5 a day towards the food budget. How could anyone argue that this is unreasonable, or not a fair representation of their daily costs outside the hospital environment, regardless of background? Michael R Gordon

Bewdley, Worcestershire