Chef | Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Lancashire Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Preston; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading hospital trust in Preston is seeking a dedicated Chef who will prepare and cook meals for patients and staff. The ideal candidate will have strong food preparation skills, knowledge of dietary needs, and must comply with hygiene standards. This role offers a supportive team environment and no unsocial hours. Join us to make a meaningful contribution to patient care and be part of our award-winning kitchen team.

Benefits

Opportunities for skill development

Supportive team environment

No unsocial hours

Qualifications

• Experience in food production and service.
• Ability to supervise kitchen assistants.
• Good knowledge of special therapeutic diets.

Responsibilities

• Prepare and cook food for staff and patients.
• Ensure food safety and hygiene regulations are met.
• Communicate effectively with colleagues and customers.
• Supervise and train kitchen assistants.
• Allocate work to staff as needed.

Skills

Food preparation

Communication skills

Teamwork

Knowledge of dietary needs

Hygiene standards compliance

Education

Food hygiene certification (level 2)

HACCP qualification (level 2)

Tools

Cooking equipment

Food storage systems

Job description

Overview

Being a Chef is one thing….but being a Chef in our hospital helping nourish our patients is something else.

We know how much you will love ensuring nutritious and delicious meals are served to our patients and staff – taking great pride in knowing the meals you are preparing contribute to patient care and keeps our hospitals running.

You will also prepare food for our staff and visitors and we are so proud to work together to prepare 2,000 meals on site, 365 days a year in our fabulous kitchen facility at Preston Hospital. There is plenty of opportunity for you to develop your skills and be creative with our menus, trying new things as well as preparing some of the classic dishes our patients love.

Your passion for food and cooking will be what makes you stand out from the rest. Of course, you won’t be alone, we have a great team of kitchen staff who will support you all the way and cannot wait to welcome you. We have a great team ethos, all supporting each other and working together to achieve the best outcomes and we are really proud of this.

We won’t shy away from saying that at times it will be a challenging role, but we know you will expect this and of course, this will be offset by how rewarding it is too.

Your day-to-day role will be to prepare, cook and present food for staff, visitors and primarily patients to the highest standards in line with the department’s quality control guidelines.

We already have a number of great people working within our hospitals, so we asked them what they enjoyed about this department, and this is what they had to say: https://vimeo.com/685894666/323be04684

You will ensure and observe the correct and economic use of materials and equipment, we want your ideas to help keep waste to a minimum and being creative to achieve this. You will have a good knowledge of special and therapeutic diets as well as religious, ethnic and other dietary needs as well as knowledge and experience of cook-chill production systems. You will also take responsibility for the supervision of our Kitchen Assistants and work with them to ensure all the activities get done on time to contribute to the smooth running of our kitchen facility.

So what can we offer you? Well as well as working for an award winning organisation, you will join a very strong and dedicated team who work so hard together and have fun along the way. The satisfaction of knowing you played your part in helping look after our patients is what will drive you the most.

We will help you develop your skills, give you opportunities to try new things and we actively encourage you to challenge us to constantly review what we do, our processes and approaches.

You wont have to work any unsocial hours like you would in many other sectors – in fact, our existing Chefs say this is one of the things they like the most.

We are a great, modern facility with all the best gadgets and equipment – albeit in a really big scale.

We would love you to come and have a look around to see exactly what it's like, meet our teams and get to know us – just contact Neal Cropper to organise it.

Responsibilities

• Communicate effectively with colleagues to ensure an accurate exchange of information about catering tasks and service needs
• Communicate with a range of customers in person and over the telephone to understand individual needs and provide information relating to the catering service
• Appropriate communication with colleagues within our service areas, promote team working and shared goals
• Undertake all duties relating to food production and service, including:-
• Serving of food in restaurants and for patients on meal assembly belts, in wards and other patient dining rooms. This to be carried out in a timely and attractive manner to enhance appearance observing portion control
• Preparation and serving of food at functions anywhere on Trust premises.

• Allocate work and support ongoing training of kitchen assistants under your supervision.
• Meet all required deadlines
• Ensure foods are wholesome and safe
• General preparation of raw meat, fish and poultry, including weighing, traying up into containers and labelling correctly, paying attention to prevent any risk of cross contamination.
• General preparation of all bakery items for both staff and patient menus.
• Cooking of food as per standard recipes to meet the required departmental requirements, Following daily menus and production lists using a variety of traditional cooking methods, maintaining the ‘Better Hospital Food’ standards.
• Cooking of food for adhoc events for as per production lists.
• Ensure sufficient food is prepared for each meal using figures provided.
• Have knowledge of special therapeutic diets and be able to respond at short notice.
• Ensure current hygiene regulations are adhered to paying particular attention to temperatures of food during storage, preparation, cooking and service.
• Ensuring all food products are covered and have appropriate labels with dates attached.
• Competent in the application of food hygiene at a minimum of level 2 (desirable level 3) and qualified in HACCP to level 2
• demonstrating diligence at all times
• Supervise catering assistants on the patient service belt if the need arises due to unforeseen circumstances.
• Ensure security of trust assets including foodstuffs and reporting any thefts or losses.

Health and safety

• Report any defective equipment or health and safety hazards
• Escalate to a manager if necessary
• Taking the piece of equipment out of action if required.

Proactively support the continued development of the catering service

Maintain and develop own competence

Undertakes any training deemed necessary by the Trust or catering management team

This advert closes on Wednesday 5 Nov 2025