Nearly 300,000 children set to miss out on free meals

"There is often half the month where I'm making ends meet with my credit card," confessed Kirsty, a single mother of three on universal credit. "Money runs out quickly."

- ALBERT TOTH

The youngest of her children attends preschool three days a week and requires a packed lunch. “I often will spend £10-plus on lunchbox items every few days, topping up bread, cheese, butter, crisps, yoghurts, fruit... It adds up very quickly to a very scary amount.”

And this situation is likely to continue for hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young children despite government plans to expand free school meals next year, according to a new report.

Around 290,000 children under five will not receive free meals as the expansion does not extend to most nurseries and childcare settings, experts from food policy research group Bremner & Co found.

Sponsored by The Food Foundation, Impact on Urban Health and the Early Years Food Coalition, the report finds that this will create a “stark disparity” between childcare settings, urging the government to ensure the policy reaches all children.

While nearly 30 per cent of pupils in schools will receive free school meals after the expansion to include all universal credit households from September 2026, researchers found that only 4 per cent of children in formal childcare will receive the same provision.

These will only be children who attend a state-funded early years setting full-time and are successfully registered for the meals. After the expansion, the number of children in these settings provided for is expected to rise from 24,000 to 39,000 - far fewer than the number who will miss out.