Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding allocated by his Department to support the provision of free (a) activities and (b) food during school holidays.

We have invested £2 million on this programme in 2018 and £9 million in 2019 and have previously announced a £9 million programme for summer 2020.

In summer 2019 we invested £9 million in 11 local authority areas reaching around 50,000 children and received 53 eligible bids for funding in 2019 that were unsuccessful with a total value of £29.8 million. We also received 28 further bids that did not meet the basic eligibility criteria for the fund and so did not receive substantive assessment. Feedback was offered to all the unsuccessful bidders.

For our 2020 programme, we have received 9 bids from the North East region and 62 bids in total across England. The total value of bids in the North East is £6.3 million and the total across England is £41.4 million. The assessment process for bids for the 2020 summer programme remains ongoing and we will announce the outcome of the process shortly.