Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department holds on the Holiday Activities and Food Programme from returns submitted by local authorities following the end of each holiday period.

For the holiday, activities and food (HAF) programme, the department collects data from local authorities after each delivery period, to support performance monitoring, inform policy development and support evaluation.

Data collection includes the number of children attending HAF provision, broken down by characteristics such as free school meal (FSM) eligibility, as well as the number of places available and how well providers meet the HAF framework of standards.

Since 2022, the HAF programme has provided 20.4 million HAF days to children and young people in this country, providing nutritious meals and enriching activities during school holidays, benefitting their health, wellbeing and readiness to learn. Over the three most recent winter, Easter and summer delivery periods, almost five million HAF days were provided. Over summer 2025, local authorities reported that over 624,000 children and young people attended the programme, of whom more than 513,000 were funded directly through HAF and over 434,000 were receiving benefits-related FSMs.