Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much of the £16 million announced for food charities on 8 May 2020 has been allocated to frontline food aid providers (a) within and (b) beyond the FareShare network to date.

In March 2020, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government announced a support package of £16m to provide food for vulnerable individuals.

The programme of measures was designed to provide millions of meals over the summer period and was broken down into three separate parts:

1. FareShare received £10.5m of the £16m allocation;
2. A Food Charity Grant Scheme was set-up for individual charities to apply for grants for up to £100,000; and
3. £1.8m was awarded to the Covid-19 emergency food surplus redistribution programme, which was administered by the Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP).

In total 6,802,260kg of food was purchased and allocated to 3,201 frontline food aid providers which fall within the FareShare network, equivalent to 16.1 million meals. FareShare also received £386,444 of the £1.8m awarded to the Covid-19 emergency food surplus redistribution programme.

In total 19,010,83kg of food was purchased and allocated to 1,339 frontline food aid providers which fall beyond the FareShare network, equivalent to 3.3 million meals. Other redistribution charities received £1,413,556 of the £1.8m awarded to the Covid-19 emergency food surplus redistribution programme.

As a result of the £10.5m grant, the equivalent of around 20 million meals were purchased and distributed to charities across England, including charities supporting refuges, homeless shelters and rehabilitation services. It covered rural areas as well as cities and targeted all those who were struggling to get food.