Bishop’s Stortford College, a long-term participant in the Continuous Advancement Programme (CAP) for catering excellence, has completed the annual CAP audit for 2019 and achieved its seventh consecutive Gold Award.

The Hertfordshire independent co-educational day and boarding school, which has almost 1200 pupils from ages four to 18, has benefited from CAP’s progressive measure-and-achieve model to continuously improve catering standards year on year. Successive Gold Awards confirm that the catering team has reached the highest expectations every year as new goals are set.

CAP works with educational and healthcare organisations throughout the UK to help continuously improve housekeeping and catering performance. Achieving high standards in these areas is easily visible and can increase approval ratings among stakeholders, external assessors, and general visitors. As an independent measure of performance, a strong CAP audit record can provide a vital edge as organisations seek to attract staff, pupils, or funding for various types of projects.

At Bishop’s Stortford College, the catering team provides daily meals for full, weekly, flexi and part-time boarders, as well as lunches for the staff and day pupils. Commenting on yet another excellent audit performance, College Bursar, Paul Stanley said, “In looking after our four-year-olds through to the 18-year-olds, the Catering Department has a great relationship with the pupils and their teachers. Credit to the team on their continued success.”

Ian Jackson, CAP’s chief assessor at the audit in May this year, said, “Providing suitable and interesting meals for pupils and staff across such a wide age range is no easy task. From all perspectives the catering is well balanced, nutritious, varied and – I can vouch personally – very tasty indeed. Well done to all involved.”

CAP schemes are tailored in consultation with each client, and designed to benchmark and improve standards progressively on an annual basis. Clients can choose to focus on housekeeping and cleaning, or catering, or both, according to their own objectives. CAP auditors are experts in their respective fields, qualified to provide a detailed and constructive assessment of current status and points for improvement. CAP works with clients to establish a plan of action and targets for the next 12 months and can provide recommendations to help achieve the desired standard.