That’s the view of Catriona Bhatia, Scottish Borders Council’s executive member for education, who last week failed in a bid to speed up the implementation of the so-called cashless catering project.

It will be 2009 before the state-of-the-art programme, which uses smartcard technology, is rolled out in all nine Borders high schools.

Councillor Bhatia urged SBC’s executive last week to approve capital spending of £175,000 for the system and allow tender documents to be sent to interested providers.

But chief executive David Hume advised that a decision should be delayed to allow “technical issues relating to finance” to be clarified in a further report.

He was referring to the use of £100,000 from the technical services budget which had previously been allocated for an enhanced recycling and waste-processing project. The balance of £75,000 will come from education’s capital allocation.

Mrs Bhatia noted the funding had already been jointly agreed by education director Glenn Rodger and his technical services counterpart, Callum Hay.

“We have been talking about this for months and we really must get things started,” said Mrs Bhatia. “This system is already in place in most of the rest of Scotland yet the Borders, by contrast, is in the dark ages. If technical services believe the money can be diverted away from recycling, then so be it.”

When up and running, the system will allow pupils to pay for meals using their National Entitlement Cards. It will also allow parents to top-up accounts via the SBC website while setting spending limits on their children for meals and snacks. Major benefits include the eradication of queue congestion and the end of any stigma against pupils entitled to free meals.

The meeting heard the timetable for implementation would see the system installed at Earlston High in January 2009, just eight months before a replacement school opens for business.

Mrs Bhatia felt a decision on such a short-term arrangement could be delegated to herself, Mr Rodger, Mr Hay and Councillor Jim Fullarton, executive member for technical services, and should not hold up approval of the project.

But Councillor Carolyn Riddell-Carre felt a determination on Earlston and the issues relating to the diversion of recycling funds to the project should be delegated to Mr Hume and SBC’s two depute leaders – Neil Calvert and Alec Nicol.

The vote was split at 5-5 until Mr Nicol, standing in as chairman in the absence of David Parker, used his casting vote to thwart his Liberal Democrat colleague, Mrs Bhatia.

After the meeting, Mrs Bhatia told TheSouthern: “This is primarily a matter for education and technical services and it is wrong that the elected members chosen to represent these departments should be excluded in this way.”