School & Nursery Milk Alliance

PR Campaign example to support the School & Nursery Milk Aliance Scheme in the UK.

Background

Whitehouse established the School & Nursery Milk Alliance, together with Cool Milk, to be the voice of those campaigning to safeguard current school and nursery milk provisions and promote it across the country. Members of the alliance span from school milk providers such as Muller, to campaigning organisations such as Dairy UK and the National Farmers Union, to 10,500 schools and education setting organisations.

Strategy and outcomes

Whitehouse identified the risk of the end of milk provision in schools immediately after the referendum result was known to ensure that the Government recognised the importance of school milk and that children and farmers alike needed to be given certainty going forward.

Through campaigning, the Whitehouse team secured two governments’ commitment to cover the cost of the lost EU funding for school milk until a new, more domestically appropriate scheme can be devised and implemented, regardless of the outcome of Brexit negotiations. The UK Government also successfully applied to remain in the scheme for the academic year 2019/2020. Whitehouse spread the word via a targeted media campaign in the trade press and secured a story run in Farmers’ Guardian including a quote from the SNMA’s spokesperson Dr Hilary Jones.

Whitehouse also hosts monthly awards for schools that teach children about environmental sustainability and the benefits of milk.

Whitehouse has helped millions of children to enjoy drinking milk at school and nursery by bringing together like-minded people from across the UK to ensure that the School and Nursery Milk message is heard.