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The
Sir Thomas Picton Comprehensive School is situated just outside the centre
of the West Wales market town of Haverfordwest. A very pleasant location,
but also very convenient for the fast food outlets in the centre of the
town. Although the school provided a nutritional menu, the allure of 'fast
food' being only a short walk away was too much for many. With a school
size of around 1200, only about a third of the pupils were eating in the
school. The kitchen was in the shape of a T, with dining areas at both
ends of the cross piece, not the most convenient of layouts.
Pembrokeshire
CC have an ongoing programme of school kitchen refurbishment, and given
the aging design of the Sir Thomas Picton kitchen, it made sense to
prioritise this. The two main problems to be solved were: - A means of
persuading more children to eat in the dining rooms, and the provision of
extra space to accommodate them.
To
address these problems, a radical solution was called for. One that RACS
felt well able to provide. RACS were contracted to Pembrokeshire CC to
produce the design for a radical school kitchen, one of the first of its
type in Wales, and then tendered for, and won, the installation contract.
To
solve the first problem, and make eating in more attractive, the kitchen
should be converted into a 'fast food' style outlet within the school, but
would also retain some traditional meals on the menu. The second of the
above objectives could be achieved by reducing the size of the kitchen
area and using the released space as a servery area. This would then be at
the end of the kitchen, with a beverage and fast food servery counter,
while the cooking and preparation equipment could be sited further into
the kitchen area.
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The existing cooking and food preparation
equipment was, in the main, still of good quality and functioning well. In
order to provide the most cost effective solution, much of this was reused
in the final design. The concept of having the cooking equipment in an
island unit was retained as being the most ergonomically satisfactory, but
all the equipment needed to be moved, new washing areas for food and
dirties had to be provided, preparation tables had to be resited, and the
servery and counter area had to be designed and manufactured specifically
for this kitchen design. |
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The
kitchen floor required some repairs, and all of the walls had to be
painted, or have PVC whiterock cladding installed. Both mechanical and
electrical services required considerable modification. A new extractor
canopy was installed above the cooking island, and tills and rails to
divide up the queuing pupils completed the design. All of the work was
completed within the school summer holidays, enabling the dining facility
to reopen for the Autumn term.
The new fast food outlet at Sir Thomas Picton School provides a range
of four 'meal deals' from the fast food outlet, as well as a traditional
school meal, which rotates on a three-week basis. While not completely
curing the pupil body of its penchant to walk to the town centre, the take
up of school meals has increased from the original 33% to 51%.
"A superb installation,
which satisfied all of our requirements, and was put in within our
timescales"
Rosemary
Griffiths
Pembrokeshire
CC
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