PENSIONERS at a Trowbridge luncheon club are so disgusted with the food they are being given they are taking their own packed lunches.

Springtime luncheon club, which meets at Longfield Community Centre, may be forced to close because its members are so upset with the meals provided by contractor Sodexho.

Complaints include comments the meals are unvaried, often overheated and some cold deserts are still frozen when they arrive.

Club chairman Norman Brewer said the meals were disastrous and the demand had dropped from 60 to 30. Many pensioners are now opting for salad or bringing their own lunch, while others are just leaving.

Mr Brewer said: "People are fed up and ready to leave. The whole point of a luncheon club is entertainment and a meal. Some people are bringing packed lunches or little cans of soup. It is ridiculous."

The problems set in after Wiltshire County Council contracted out its meals service to French firm Sodexho in June.

Luncheon clubs were left to find their own meal providers or let the new firm take over and the clubs which agreed to use Sodexho are bound by contract until March.

A Sodexho spokesman said: "There were problems with food arriving overheated at the beginning of the contract but that has been rectified.

"The menus were fixed in the contract for the first three months but from the new year people will be able to phone and specify what meals they would like."

Mr Brewer said: "My heart is in my mouth at the moment. Nobody wants the senior citizens anymore, not even the homes or hospitals. We are trying to help people and give them somewhere to go. This is a cry for help."

The club had to start from scratch a year ago after Longfield Community Centre closed when its trading arm Weavers Social Club went into debt, and the ovens used for the lunches were taken by creditors.

Mr Brewer said: "Our volunteers have been in tears about the way things are going. We are fed up with all the promises made by different people and organisations who say they will help. We are still in the same situation."

Other clubs in the town chose not to use Sodexho because of the meals. Mary Stacey, chairman of the Studley Green Day Care centre management committee, said: "We went to a tasting and were not impressed. There was no way we were going to serve that to our people."

Annie Hudson, director of Social Services at Wiltshire County Council, said the concerns had been discussed at a meeting with Sodexho on November 29 and further meetings were planned for the new year.