Half a million children 'will face holiday hunger' if £1bn local crisis fund is ditched

More than half a million children will go hungry during school holidays 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.

- Patrick Butler

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 over a quarter of authorities say this support could disappear if the fund is ditched.

Discontinuing the HSF will 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.

Its 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 a nearly a third of English local authority areas covering 18 million people, including Birmingham, Bradford, Nottingham, Westminster, Croydon, Hampshire, Slough, and Stoke-on-Trent.