TV chefs join Mayor celebration of second year of free school meals
TV Chefs Tom Kerridge and Seema Pankhania joined the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to celebrate the start of the second year of his unprecedented funding of free school meals – as Sadiq reiterated that all children attending state primary schools in London will receive the meals while he’s Mayor.
Sadiq was joined by the TV chefs at Henry Fawcett Primary School in Lambeth, to mark the extension of his historic funding that last year delivered more than 43m meals to London’s schoolchildren, helping families across the capital.
City Hall has invested a further £140m to continue the programme for a second year to ensure that all children attending state primary school in London are offered a free, nutritious meal. It is expected that up to 270,000 children will benefit this year and that families could save more than £1,000 over the first two years per child.
Previously, children in Years 3 to 6 would only receive free school meals if they lived in households on Universal Credit earning less than £7,400 a year – after tax and not including benefits – and regardless of the number of children in the family.
A report by the Child Poverty Action Group and the National Education Union has shown that providing all children free school meals has a wide range of benefits. It improves financial and psychological security for parents as they don’t have to worry about the cost of food at school, supports school engagement with improved concentration and engagement from pupils, and reduces stigma for children who would ordinarily get means-tested meals.
The Mayor says that he is committed to doing all he can to support families and is also providing £7.5m for meals for families during holidays and at weekends through his free holiday meals programme. More than 15.3m holiday and weekend meals have been distributed by The Felix Project and Mayor’s Fund for London via community organisations since the programme began in April 2023, and an estimated 3.7m more have been distributed over this summer holiday.
The support is part of the Mayor’s wide-ranging work to help Londoners struggling as a consequence of the previous Government’s cost-of-living crisis. This includes funding London Citizens Advice and London Legal Support Trust to extend free advice and support services across the capital, supporting the capital’s first multibank to distribute a range of products to people in need, freezing TfL fares and investing £3.46bn into building the genuinely affordable homes Londoners need.
