REDLAND Primary will be able to serve hot meals for the first time in nearly 12 years from its new KitchenPod - the first of its kind among Chippenham's schools.

The ready-made fully equipped portable kitchen building arrived on Saturday on the back of a lorry and was craned into position.

It was developed by Gloucestershire firm PKL after schools were asked to provide all five to seven-year-olds with a free lunch.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pledged all children in reception and years one and two would get this by September 2014, as part of a government drive to aid learning.

Now Redland School in Brook Street has received £190,000 government funding to help it deliver.

Headteacher Hilary Lambert said: “We are one of the lucky ones to get this. We are the only school in Wiltshire to get that amount of money and the first to have a kitchen shipped in, it was an amazing sight to see.

“We’re absolutely delighted we can provide hot, tasty, nutritious meals cooked on the premises, not having them shipped in.

"It is the first time we have had a kitchen in nearly 12 years. Everybody had a packed lunch before. The parents are delighted.

"To have an actual brick build would cost a lot more and take a lot longer and we don't have the space."

The school has employed Fran Bowling, formerly an assistant in the school office, as the full-time catering manager, and has also taken on two part-time catering assistants.

They are aiming to cater for 210 meals at a time and plan to start serving taster runs from June 8 and have a full service from June 22.

Brinkworth Earl Danby's Church of England Primary and All Cannings Church of England Primary in Devizes are also receiving funding to improve their kitchen facilities.

Free primary school meals for all pupils was one of the recommendations of a school food review done for the Department for Education two years ago, by two founders of the Leon restaurant chain.

It concluded that packed lunches were nearly always less nutritious than a cooked meal, and that giving all children free lunches would raise academic standards.