A total of 536 people have signed a petition calling for the vouchers to continue this summer
The withdrawal of school holiday food vouchers in a South London borough leaves children at risk of going hungry this summer, opposition councillors have said.
Conservative-led Wandsworth Council is discontinuing the vouchers from the 2026 summer holidays onwards, after the Government changed how it funds council support for low-income families. The changes put an end to the automatic provision of supermarket vouchers during the school holidays for all children who receive free school meals.
A total of 536 people have signed a new petition by Wandsworth Labour calling for the vouchers to be continued this summer. It comes after the Government replaced the Household Support Fund, introduced in 2021, with the Crisis Resilience Fund on March 31, asking councils to move away from providing shopping vouchers to instead offer longer-term help and financial support.
While many local authorities have already stopped providing the school holiday food vouchers, some councils are continuing to do so through their own budgets for at least part of the summer holidays – including Hackney, Sutton, Cambridgeshire, and Bath and North East Somerset councils – to prepare families for the support ending.
Wandsworth Labour’s petition calls on the council to continue providing the vouchers through the holidays. It says more than 10,000 children received £20 a week in school holiday food vouchers while Labour ran the council from 2022 to May this year.
The petition adds: “Cutting food support would leave some of the borough’s most vulnerable children at risk of going hungry.”
The council said it is still running the Holiday Activities and Food programme, providing free activities and healthy food for children eligible for benefits-related free school meals, and delivering Magic Breakfast holiday packs to families.
Conservative councillor George Crivelli, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, said: “Wandsworth Labour need to petition the Labour Government, not the council. This is a change to their own government’s funding rules, which we are doing our best to mitigate.”
A council spokesperson added: “The council was using the national Household Support Fund to provide holiday free school meal vouchers. The Government has replaced this support with a Crisis and Resilience Fund.
“Its new, national rules mean that councils are no longer allowed to provide vouchers. However, we are providing other holiday support through the Holiday Activities and Food programme, Magic Breakfast holiday packs and additional local help.”
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