A pressure group is calling for the resignation of council chiefs responsible for scrapping hot meals in West Sussex primary schools.

Hot school meals were axed by the local authority last September in a bid to save £500,000.

The meals were replaced with packed lunches and over 500 dinner staff were made jobless.

Now an open letter has been sent to West Sussex County Council pressing for the policy makers to resign and for hot meals to be reinstated.

The letter, from a group calling itself the Campaign for Hot School Meals, criticises council officers for "failing to represent the health and educational interests of the children".

It says they should resign or retire now to avoid being forced into "an embarrassing U-turn" where they will end up with "egg on their faces and hot food back on school plates".

Richard Symonds, who has two primary school age children, Peter, nine, and David, seven, wrote the letter on behalf of the group.

He said: "It is to all those responsible for the irresponsible policy decision to deprive 60,000 primary-aged children of a hot meal, especially in winter.

"They have not listened to, or acted upon, the genuine expressions of anger and fear felt passionately by reasonable people.

"We want them to do the honourable thing and resign or retire early."

A council spokeswoman said: "The decision to cut the hot meals subsidy and switch to a cold packed lunch service will produce £3 million over the four years of the contract to be spent on essential classroom resources.

"West Sussex County Council received the lowest grant of any county and needed to make savings in order to protect school budgets."