Some people may be offered frozen ready meals

Cumbria County Council provides 227,000 meals a year to the vulnerable and elderly at a cost of �465,350.

But the authority says the service is out of date and is struggling to recruit enough delivery volunteers.

It is considering substituting some with frozen "ready meals" and raising charges from �1.60 to �2.60 per meal.

A council spokesman said the changes could include restricting hot meal deliveries to those who are already receiving additional social services.

'More flexibility'

Others would be offered frozen ready meals to consume when required.

A spokesman said: "Receiving food from someone is a very important event.

"Some people who current receive a hot delivered meal and no other services are quite active and able to enjoy fairly good engagement in the community.

"Such people are at times not at home when the meal is delivered at present and some would prefer to have more flexibility over what, when and where they eat.

"For such people it would be possible to arrange for them to receive an agreed number of frozen meals of their choice to be delivered to them from companies which specialise in this service."

Councillors are due to discuss the situation later this week.