Schools: Food

(asked on 29th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, on what dates Edenred’s contracts to deliver (a) the national free school meal voucher scheme and (b) the COVID Summer Food Fund will come to an end.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 2nd July 2020

Provision for free school meals is ordinarily term time only. However, owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, the government understands that children and parents face an entirely unprecedented situation over the summer. To reflect this, we will be providing additional funding for a COVID Summer Food Fund which will enable families with children who are eligible for benefits-related free school meals to receive food vouchers covering the 6-week holiday period. Our guidance on the COVID Summer Food Fund is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-summer-food-fund.

The department’s contract with Edenred for supplying both the national free school meals voucher scheme and the COVID Summer Food Fund will expire on 31 August 2020.

We have announced details of the COVID Summer Food Fund in our daily bulletin to schools and on social media. A link to information on the COVID Summer Food Fund has been added to our guidance on providing free school meals during the COVID-19 outbreak here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance/covid-19-free-school-meals-guidance-for-schools.

Edenred have also emailed all eligible schools with information about the fund and the deadlines for placing orders. We have discussed these arrangements with teaching unions and wider stakeholders. When the national voucher scheme was set up, Edenred sent emails to all eligible schools, containing a link with which to activate their accounts. All eligible schools that had not yet activated their account were sent a new link in the week commencing 22 June 2020.

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