Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 15 May 2020 to Question 47237 on Free School Meals: Blackpool, what criteria his Department used to assess bids for the summer 2020 schemes.

In October 2019, we announced £9 million for the Holiday Activities and Food Programme 2020 and invited organisations to bid to coordinate free holiday provision for disadvantaged children in a local authority area during the 2020 summer holidays.

All of the bids received were assessed against the criteria published in our ‘Invitation to bid’ which has been attached.

Each bid was then ranked according to their score and we selected the ten highest scoring bids for funding. The level of funding allocated to each successful bid was in line with the scale and nature of their proposed programme, as detailed in their respective bids.

We will publish the list of successful bidders for 2020 this month.