No free school meals vouchers for Leeds families during Easter holidays, Leeds City Council confirms

The authority blamed Government cuts for the decision, adding that further details on what families will be offered will be announced "shortly", despite the Easter holidays beginning this week.

Some neighbouring local authorities, such as Kirklees Council, announced they would continue with their offer of free school meals scheme over the two week break, which usually involves families being given vouchers to spend on food.

A spokesperson for Leeds City Council said: “The free school meals scheme will not be available over the Easter holidays as it had been previously as the government funding has ended. We are currently looking at how we can best use available funding from the recently announced Household Support Fund to support such schemes in future.

"We are committed to offering families in Leeds as much support as we can during the forthcoming school holiday period, including extending our existing Healthy Holidays scheme as widely as possible, with further details on that to be announced shortly.”

Chantal Nogbou, 43, co-founded Leeds baby bank around five years ago.

She said the lack of warning by the council about the scheme not being offered would leave many families in very difficult situations.

"Many families would have put a few pound a week away if they would have known.

"As far as I know this was only announced days ago, the Easter Holidays start this week.

"Families who have been reliant on free school meals would have expected this to continue into the holidays.

"They have found out suddenly with no notice.

"Schools only broke up on Friday.

"It will be so difficult for them."

Chantal - who is a mum of four - said food "has got to come from somewhere" and empathised with other families across Leeds, saying her own children were "often in the cupboards when not at school".

"Where is that food going to come from?", she added.

"Parents will be making the decision of whether the food they buy will feed both their kids and themselves.

"That is the decision that families in Leeds will be making right now.

"'Do I have money for food this week or only the bare essentials?'"

Marcus Rashford sparked a government u-turn on plans not to feed children during the school holidays.

However, Chantal questioned if small charities would have had the same impact without him and said the government is now "backtracking" from their change of heart.

"Had [Rashford] not done something, would the government had listened at the time?", she said.

"Now they are not being held accountable for what the council is doing."

Chantal described the situation as a 'postcode lottery', with Kirklees families continuing to benefit from free school meals.

"Many families will struggle during this break", she said.

The healthy holidays programme offered by Leeds council instead offers clubs end events throughout the school holidays.

These are run by schools, community hubs and voluntary groups, and have a healthy meal included for free. There are numerous clubs around the city, but places are limited and must be pre-booked.

According to Kirklees Council's website, vouchers would be provided to around 17,000 children and young people living in the district during the Easter Holidays, these are worth £30 per child for the two-week Easter break.

The issue of free school meals hit the headlines in the summer of 2020 when the Government announced it would not be offering such a scheme, despite many parents struggling to make ends meet at the height of the Covid pandemic.

Following a campaign led by Manchester United and England striker Marcus Rashford, Prime Minister Boris Johnson eventually made a U-turn, choosing to offer free school meals over the 2020 summer holidays.

Later that year a motion put forward by Labour MPs calling for free school meals to be extended over school holidays until Easter 2021 was voted on by MPs in Parliament. It was defeated by 261 votes to 322 in the commons, with three Leeds MPs – Andrea Jenkyns, Stuart Andrew and Alec Shelbrooke – voting against it.

But in the following weeks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced free school meals during school holidays would in fact be funded by government until late 2021.

In July 2021, Leeds City Council arranged £500,000 in "top up" funding to ensure children would not go hungry during that year's summer holidays.

According to guidance published by Government last October, it was announced that the Holiday Activities and Food programme would expand, adding: "Disadvantaged children across England are being offered free healthy meals and enriching activities over the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays.

"Local authorities will receive funding to coordinate the delivery of the programme. Some may co-ordinate it themselves, and others may choose to work with another organisation to co-ordinate provision on their behalf.

"The programme will make free places available to children who are eligible for free school meals for a minimum of four hours a day, four days a week, six weeks a year. This would cover four weeks in the summer, and a week’s worth of provision in each of the Easter and Christmas holidays.

"Funding to local authorities will reflect the participation rate among eligible children, based on what we have seen in the pilot stage of this programme."

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