Allergy Safety Guidance: Is Your School Catering Service Ready?

For school caterers, managing allergies has always been a serious responsibility, but the expectations around allergy safety in schools are changing.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 has introduced new statutory allergy safety duties for schools in England, and the Department for Education has now published statutory guidance setting out what schools must do to support pupils with allergies.

Schools are required to have an allergy safety policy, review it at least annually and make it available to their school community. The guidance also addresses staff training, Individual Healthcare Plans, emergency response, incidents and near misses, information sharing and reducing exposure to known allergens.

The legal duty to have the policy sits with the school, but making allergy safety work in practice cannot sit with the school alone.

For catering teams responsible for preparing and serving thousands of school meals, this is an opportunity to look closely at the processes connecting the school office, parents, kitchen and serving counter.

What has changed?

Section 34 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 introduced statutory allergy safety requirements into existing legislation governing support for pupils with medical conditions.

The Act requires relevant schools to have an allergy safety policy, review it at least annually and publicise it appropriately. It also gives the Government powers to introduce further requirements relating to areas including allergy management, staff training, medicinal products and medical devices, and the recording and reporting of incidents.

The Department for Education published its new Allergy safety in schools statutory guidance on 6 July 2026.

For catering providers, there is another important piece of the picture.

The Food Information Regulations 2014 already require food businesses, including school caterers, to provide allergen ingredient information for the food they serve. Requirements also apply to allergen labelling on prepacked for direct sale food.

So the new school allergy safety requirements do not replace your existing food information responsibilities. They strengthen the wider environment in which school catering teams are operating.

What does this mean for school caterers?

The Government guidance makes clear that children with allergies and food hypersensitivities should be able to enjoy school meals alongside their peers, with risks managed effectively.

Schools are expected to work with caterers, parents and pupils so that risks can be identified, minimised and managed effectively.

For catering providers, that raises some practical questions:

• How do you receive information about a pupil's allergy?

• How quickly does an update from a parent reach your catering team?

• How do you know that the information your kitchen is using is current?

• How are menu changes checked against dietary requirements?

• What does the member of staff serving the pupil actually see?

• And if you operate across dozens or hundreds of schools, how consistently does that process work at every site?

These are not simply technology questions. They are operational questions.

1. Review how allergy information reaches your kitchen

Start with the journey the information takes:

• A parent may tell the school about an allergy, but how does that information reach your catering team?

• Is it emailed?

• Added to a spreadsheet?

• Printed?

• Entered manually into another system?

• Passed verbally to the kitchen?

• And what happens when something changes?

Every additional handover creates another process that needs to be managed carefully.

Our own 2026 research found that 30% of schools surveyed identified communication with catering staff as a primary difficulty, while 39% said they struggle to keep dietary data up to date.

Tip for caterers: map the complete information journey from parent to school to kitchen to serving counter. Identify where information is duplicated, manually entered or dependent on an individual member of staff passing it on.

2. Make sure menu changes do not create information gaps

School menus change. Ingredients can change. Suppliers can change. Products can be substituted. Schools may also adapt menus for religious and cultural reasons.

Government guidance specifically states that when menus or products change, schools and caterers must continue to consider pupils with special dietary needs. Caterers are advised to check product changes with suppliers and read labels and product information before using a product.

For larger catering organisations, this becomes an issue of scale.

A process that works when one chef knows every child may be much harder to maintain consistently across multiple kitchens and school sites.

Tip for caterers: review how dietary requirements are considered whenever menus, ingredients or suppliers change. Make sure the process does not rely solely on individual knowledge or memory.

3. Look at what happens at the serving counter

A good process in the back office still needs to work during service.

The lunchtime rush is where information, people and operational pressure come together.

Serving teams need relevant information when the pupil reaches the counter, without having to search through paperwork or rely solely on memory. This is also where inclusion matters.

The statutory guidance emphasises wellbeing as part of allergy safety. The Government's wider guidance says pupils with allergies should be able to enjoy school meals alongside their peers, with risks managed effectively.

Some schools use wristbands, lanyards or other visible identifiers to communicate dietary information.

Those approaches can communicate important information, but caterers and schools should also consider whether relevant information can be communicated to serving teams in a more discreet way.

Tip for caterers: walk through a real lunch service from the perspective of a pupil with an allergy. Consider what the server knows, how they know it and what happens if the usual member of staff is absent.

4. Make allergy awareness part of your workforce planning

The Government's allergy safety policy template specifically includes catering staff among those who may need allergy awareness training when they are present while pupils are on site.

For catering organisations, that makes consistency particularly important.

Permanent kitchen staff may understand the processes well, but what about new starters, temporary employees, agency workers or staff covering another school?

Tip for caterers: review how allergy procedures are included in induction, ongoing training and cover arrangements. Consider whether someone arriving at a different school site can quickly understand the processes they are expected to follow.

5. Review your process across every school you serve

For caterers operating across multiple sites, one of the biggest challenges is consistency.

Different schools may currently collect information differently. One may use a spreadsheet. Another may use paper forms. Another may communicate changes by email.

That makes it harder for the catering organisation to establish one consistent operational process.

Our research found that 40% of schools surveyed use multiple platforms to record allergy requirements.

For caterers working across a large estate, fragmented information can quickly become an operational challenge.

Tip for caterers: do not review allergy management one kitchen at a time. Look across your whole operation. Identify where different schools are creating different processes and where greater standardisation could reduce complexity.

6. Strengthen communication with parents and schools

Allergy information is not static. A pupil's requirements may change, medical evidence may be updated and new information may need to reach the school and caterer. That makes communication between all three parties important. Parents. Schools. Caterers.

The stronger that connection is, the easier it becomes to keep the people responsible for preparing and serving food working from relevant information.

Tip for caterers: review who is responsible for communicating changes, how they are verified and how you know the update has reached the people who need it.

7. Make sure you can evidence your processes

The new requirements put greater emphasis on formal allergy safety policies, training, information and learning from serious incidents and near misses.

For caterers, good record keeping can support conversations with the schools and Trusts you serve.

Rather than relying on informal processes, consider what evidence exists around dietary information, menu management and relevant changes.

Tip for caterers: ask yourself whether you could clearly demonstrate how dietary information was received, what information the catering team was working from and how an update moved through your process.

From compliance to confidence

There is an important distinction to make. The new statutory duty does not mean that catering software makes a school compliant. Nor can technology remove allergy risk. But technology can help schools and caterers build clearer, more consistent processes around the information they rely on every day.

And for a catering organisation working across multiple schools, that consistency can be particularly valuable.

How Scopay can support school caterers

Scopay has worked with schools and caterers for more than 20 years, and our Dietary Requirements, Meal Management and Point of Service solutions are being developed around the realities of school food operations.

The aim is to help connect the people involved in the meal journey, from parents and schools through to the kitchen and serving counter.

Dietary Requirements

Scopay Dietary Requirements helps bring parents, schools and caterers into a more connected process for managing allergies and dietary requirements.

The solution supports a three way process involving parents, schools and caterers, helping relevant teams work from clearer, current information.

For catering teams, this can help reduce reliance on separate spreadsheets, paper records and manual communication.

It also supports dietary requirements beyond allergies, including those relating to religion, culture and preferences, helping caterers manage increasingly diverse pupil needs.

Safer menu choices

Dietary information needs to influence what pupils are actually offered.

Our Dietary Requirements solution is designed to connect approved dietary profiles with appropriate menu choices, helping reduce reliance on manual filtering and supporting catering teams in providing suitable options.

Point of Service

When lunchtime begins, relevant information needs to reach the people serving the meal. Scopay Point of Service helps serving teams access relevant pupil information at the counter.

That can support more informed meal service, smoother queues and less reliance on paper records or visible identifiers such as wristbands and lanyards.

Meal Management

For caterers managing multiple schools, allergy management is only one part of a much bigger operational picture. Scopay Meal Management connects more of the journey, from menus and parent pre orders through to meal numbers and reconciliation.

The aim is to give catering organisations greater visibility across sites while reducing administration and helping teams manage school meal operations more consistently.

Is your catering service ready?

The introduction of statutory allergy safety duties for schools should prompt catering providers to review their own role in the process.

Not simply: Are we providing allergen information?

But:

• Are we receiving accurate pupil information?

• Can we keep that information current?

• Can the right people access it when they need it?

• Do our processes work consistently across every school we serve?

• Can we work effectively with schools and parents when something changes?

The legal responsibility for a school's allergy safety policy sits with the school.

But safer school food depends on everyone involved in the meal journey working together.

If you are reviewing your allergy and dietary requirement processes, talk to the Scopay team about how Dietary Requirements, Point of Service and Meal Management could support your catering operation.

For busy school lunch heroes.