More than half a million children will go hungry during school holiday periods from the October half-term if the government fails to renew a £1bn local welfare crisis fund due to end in six weeks’ time, charities have warned.
English councils last year spent £370m from their household support fund (HSF) allocations on holiday food vouchers for pupils on free school meals (FSM) – but more than a quarter of authorities say this support could disappear if the fund is ditched.
Discontinuing the HSF could also devastate an already threadbare crisis safety net which supports tens of thousands of families at risk of destitution with cash, food parcels, fuel vouchers, clothing, beds, cookers and other essential items.
“If HSF ends, with no long-term strategy to replace it, it will instantly plunge millions into more financial turmoil. The effects of poverty, deprivation and even malnutrition will be exacerbated and the additional costs to public services will be huge,” a report by the charity End Furniture Poverty report concludes.
The report, based on near 100% freedom of information returns from councils, shows England’s local crisis support safety net, which has existed in various forms since the 1930s, is fragmented, and in many areas, nonexistent.
Council-run local crisis support would disappear from nearly a third of English local authority areas covering 18 million people, including Birmingham, Bradford, Nottingham, Westminster, Croydon, Hampshire, Slough, and Stoke-on-Trent.
Its removal would also push scores of local food banks to the brink of insolvency, with many having become reliant on HSF cash grants to meet the explosion in demand for charity food as a result of Covid and the cost of living crisis.
The government, which last week set out the terms of reference for its long-term plan to “reduce and alleviate child poverty”, is under pressure to urgently decide the future of the HSF. Funding for the scheme runs out on 30 September, a month before the autumn statement.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last month identified the £500m HSF budget for the first six months of this year as one of a number of “unfunded” commitments made by the previous government – part of a £22bn spending shortfall – which would come under Treasury scrutiny.
Campaigners say they believe ministers will be wary of provoking a public backlash if school holiday food vouchers disappear in many areas of England. A popular campaign led by the footballer Marcus Rashford in 2020 twice forced the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, to reverse plans to scrap holiday free school meals support.
The End Furniture Poverty report reveals the extent to which local authorities have come to rely on the HSF to tackle holiday hunger in the past three years. Last year 44% of the entire budget was used to fund holiday food vouchers, the biggest single line of expenditure.
Twenty-two councils have said they will discontinue the vouchers if the HSF is not renewed, with a further 20 saying they were undecided. The report estimates that 561,000 children who currently qualify for FSM vouchers would not be able to access them if the fund was discontinued.
“The alternative to providing [holiday] vouchers is that children will go hungry until the welfare state is able to adequately cover need,” the report says. “It will reduce education opportunities and the ability of the poorest children to reach their potential.”
The HSF was introduced by the last government in autumn 2021 to try to mitigate the impact of its decision to reverse the £20 pandemic uplift to universal credit. The last government renewed the fund in March at the 11th hour, but earmarked just six months of funding.
Last year, on top of those families receiving HSF-funded school holiday food vouchers, more than 1.2m households in England accessed other forms of HSF support, and thousands more benefited from local charity services partly funded through HSF grants such as food banks, advice agencies and winter “warm room” projects.
The Local Government Association said last week that 60% of English councils would not be able to provide additional funding for local welfare crisis schemes if the HSF was discontinued, despite an expected surge in demand over the coming months as a result of high fuel and food bills.
According to End Furniture Poverty, the English local welfare crisis system is strikingly less generous than the schemes run by the Welsh and Scottish governments. Local welfare spending per head in England was £1.37 in 2023-24, compared with £10.47 in Wales and £9.16 in Scotland.
Campaigners are urging the HSF to be maintained for at least six months. Claire Donovan, the head of policy at End Furniture Poverty, said: “We know the HSF is a sticking plaster, but we desperately need one last extension of funding while an urgent review of local authority crisis support is carried out.”
A government spokesperson said: “This government will tackle the scar of poverty by making sure work pays and improving support to help people into good work. More details on the household support fund will be set out in due course.”
