Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 19 February 2020 to Question 620 on Food Poverty: Academic Year, what the combined value was of the bids received by his Department to provide free school meals during school holidays; and whether his Department received bids from organisations covering the London Borough of Harrow.

School summer holidays can be a difficult time for some families due to increased food and childcare costs and reduced incomes. We have therefore announced £9 million of funding for the 2020 summer school holidays to again support children and their families with free access to holiday clubs across the country.

This follows our £9 million investment in 2019 which explored a model of local coordination of free holiday provision in 11 local authority areas.

We held a competitive bidding round for the summer 2020 fund which closed on 13 December. All bids will be assessed against our published criteria and applicants needed to demonstrate that they could coordinate high-quality holiday clubs for children across their areas.

The combined value of the bids received by the department in 2020 is £41,397,841.78 and no bids were received covering the London Borough of Harrow.

Successful bids will be announced in due course.