A Nottingham service to help people who cannot cook for themselves is to end.
The city council’s Meals At Home service offers a delivery service of hot or frozen meals delivered directly to residents’ doors. It is aimed to people who can’t cook for themselves, but will close for good in January.
Meals At Home is available to all city residents, but due to the service no longer being “financially viable”, it is being stopped by the council.
Becky Long’s grandad is among those who will be hit by the service’s end. He has been using the service for nearly a year because he isn’t able to cook for himself.
She said he does not know what he will do when the meals are removed.
“I was shocked to hear about it,” she said. “We’d noticed the meals had been different to what he had ordered recently but we weren’t expecting it to close.
“I’ve explored alternatives for him but there is nowhere that provides meals delivered hot and ready to eat. The council gave us a list with some other suggestions but frozen meals don’t work for my granddad and he’d just order them from the supermarket if they did.
“It’s such an important service for elderly people to have access to. I imagine for a lot of older people it was their only option if they’re bedbound or struggle to do things for themselves.”
Meals at Home offers a five-week rolling menu featuring a variety of dishes from a variety of cuisines including venison hotpot, steak pie, chicken tikka masala, curried goat and meatballs in gravy.
Hot dinner and hot pudding was most recently priced at £7.50 per day. Frozen meal packs of four, five or seven meals were also available, for £24, £25 and £35 respectively.
Ms Long said the meals provided her grandad with a balanced diet.
“We’d recognised that his diet was getting worse after my grandma passed away. She always cooked for him. We had tried frozen ready meals and other options but he wasn’t eating them and was choosing takeaways and snacks for convenience instead.
“Meals at Home was the only provider in Nottingham that delivered the meals hot, and has been the only way of making sure he has cooked vegetables every day. ”
A Nottingham City Council spokesperson said: “Like many other Councils, we will be closing our Meals at Home service at the end of January 2026, as the service is no longer financially viable.
“This difficult decision follows a significant rise in food, supply and staffing costs, alongside a significant fall in customer numbers, which has resulted in the service operating at a financial loss.
“There are currently around 95 residents using the service. Each will be contacted directly and supported to move to an alternative provider or another suitable way of receiving meals, to ensure their needs continue to be met.”
