EVERY child in Swindon will tuck into a hot meal at lunchtime, under new plans for school dinners.

In the next three years, Swindon Council wants to see all pupils in the town's schools getting a warm nutritious lunch to give them energy throughout the day.

The council has drawn up a School Meals Strategy to make sure there are no more turkey twizzlers on the menu, and is hoping that children, parents and teachers and dinner ladies will add their thoughts about ways to improve the nutritional content of pupils' lunches.

It will go before the council's Children and Young People's Partnership Board on Thursday for discussion.

Around a quarter of the town's schools do not have kitchens.

And children at 22 schools never get a hot meal at lunchtime and have to eat sandwiches every day.

Four of the schools with no kitchen have hot meals brought in from neighbouring schools with kitchen facilities.

The remaining 56 schools either cook their meals in-house or use catering companies such as Scolarest or Cygnet to cook the meals.

In the strategy document the council's projects manager Victoria Guillame said: "Swindon Council is committed to improving the health of children in the borough and will work with our partners to increase the availability of hot school meals to 100 per cent by 2010.

"One of the most important components of the development of the strategy will be consultat-ion with children and young people, as well as parents, carers, headteachers and governors."

After Jamie Oliver highlight-ed the poor quality of school dinners in 2005, the Government promised to give councils more money to spend.

In the past two years the council has formed the School Nutrition Action Committee (SNAC) to set standards for healthy meals, given extra training to 200 school kitchen staff and worked on a number of other measures to encourage healthy eating.

As part of the commitment to healthy lunches, school meals project manager Kerry Davison was hired in January to work with school catering staff.

Kerry, formerly catering manager at Greendown Community School, said that when she took up the post she hoped every child in Swindon would have the choice of a hot lunch within the year.