Over the past 12 months, demand for our Litmus Verify service has grown by nearly 15%, while the service has helped recover £202,310 for clients – a 56% increase on the previous year’s figure of £129,562.
Litmus Verify is a performance insight platform which tells schools how their catering or cleaning service provider is performing against the agreed contract, and also against others in their region.
The £200k recoveries represent money returned to schools where contract costs, fees or service delivery were found to be out of step with agreed expectations – funding that can be redirected back into education, facilities and pupil outcomes.
When the real work begins
For many schools, the hard work of selecting an outsourced catering provider is understandably front-loaded – months can be spent developing specifications, running procurement exercises and appointing the right partner. But in reality, the real work starts once the contract is signed.
Appointing a provider is only the beginning. Ensuring the service continues to deliver against expectations – financially, operationally and experientially – requires ongoing scrutiny, challenge and performance management.
The difficulty is that school leaders and operations teams are already stretched, often leaving little time or capacity to manage contracts in the level of detail needed. As a result, many schools have limited visibility into whether outsourced services are truly performing as well as they could be. Contractors may provide reports, but without independent benchmarking or broader market context, it can be difficult to know:
- Are food costs competitive?
- Is Free School Meal uptake where it should be?
- Are operational standards in line with comparable schools?
- Are contractor fees proportionate to performance?
Litmus Verify can answer those questions. Powered by the largest national database of school catering performance data, Verify transforms operational and financial reporting into meaningful intelligence – helping schools understand what’s happening, how it compares, where opportunities exist, and whether they are truly receiving the value and quality they signed up for.
What Verify delivers
For schools and MATs, Verify provides a clear, independent view of service performance, enabling leaders to:
- Benchmark with confidence: Compare catering and cleaning KPIs against hundreds of schools nationwide to understand how your service measures up regionally and nationally.
- Understand satisfaction levels: Gain insight into how staff and pupils rate service quality compared with peers, highlighting opportunities for improvement or areas of excellence.
- Measure Free School Meal uptake: See whether participation rates are high, average or below benchmark – helping schools identify where engagement strategies may be needed.
- Assess cost per pupil: Understand whether food costs are aligned with comparable settings and uncover potential efficiencies.
- Identify hidden opportunities: Reveal operational and financial insights that traditional contract reporting often misses – from margin discrepancies to underperformance against agreed standards.
Tangible financial returns
The most striking outcome from Verify’s growth is simple: independent performance insight is delivering tangible financial returns.
Among the schools benefiting from the service is Holy Cross Catholic High School. Through Litmus’ ongoing monitoring of the school’s catering account, alongside support during year-end reviews and budget negotiations, the school typically achieves savings in the region of £7,000 per year. The Business Manager at Holy Cross Catholic High School shared: “Litmus’ expertise has been invaluable. They produce monthly reports which we go through with our catering contractors. The Litmus team offers experienced insight when we analyse the figures. I know that with Litmus we are in safe hands.”
Recovering more than £200,000 for clients in a single year is a significant amount and highlights a wider issue in the sector: many schools are unknowingly overpaying, under-receiving, or missing opportunities to improve service outcomes.
Litmus Verify scrutinises schools’ contracts and gives leaders the evidence they need to ask better questions, challenge where necessary, and ensure every contract is working as hard as it should.
If you’d like to understand how your catering or cleaning contract compares – and whether hidden value could be unlocked – explore Litmus Verify here and discover how data-driven benchmarking can help your school or MAT make more informed decisions.
The Litmus team
