Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to provide (a) activities and (b) food support for children over school holiday periods.

The department has invested over £200 million every year since 2022 in free holiday club places for children from low-income families, through the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme, with all 153 local authorities in England delivering in the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays.

The HAF Programme supports disadvantaged children and their families with enriching activities, providing them with healthy food, helping them to learn new things, and improving socialisation.

While the Programme is targeted primarily towards children in receipt of benefits-related free school meals, local authorities also have flexibility to use up to 15% of their funding to target and support other children and families that align with the local authorities’ own priorities.

Since 2022, the HAF programme has provided 10.7 million HAF days to children and young people in this country. The expansion of the programme year-on-year has meant a total of 5.4 million HAF days provided between Christmas 2022, Easter and summer 2023. Based on reporting from local authorities, over 680,000 children and young people attended the holiday activities and food programme in the 2023 summer holidays, including over 5,900 children and young people from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

Over Easter 2023, local authorities reported that over 394,000 children attended the programme across the country, of which over 4,400 young people attended from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

Over Christmas 2022, local authorities reported over 315,000 children attended the programme across the country, of which 1,800 young people attended from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.