Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are putting in place to help infants schools that are struggling to provide universal free school meals due to overstretched equipment or logistical problems.

We have provided substantial support to help schools deliver this policy. We have already allocated £150 million capital funding to universal infant free school meals and are now providing an additional £24.5 million for individual school projects to ensure that the meals provided are of high quality, and particularly that all schools are able to offer hot meals.

We recognise that some smaller schools may face particular challenges and have therefore allocated a further £22.5 million transitional funding in 2014-15 to help schools with 150 pupils or fewer to implement the policy. Each qualifying small school received a minimum of £3000.

This is in addition to the £1.2 billion in general capital funding for school maintenance and improvements made available to local authorities this year.

We have also set up an implementation support service, staffed by school food experts, which schools can contact for advice and support to help them overcome any issues they encounter. This service will continue to be available to schools until the end of 2015.