End to holiday food vouchers for children on free school meals in Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire County Council will be forced to end holiday food vouchers for children receiving free school meals, following changes to the Government fund to help residents with costs of living.
The Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) replaces the Household Support Fund (HSF) as the primary means of supporting residents with cost-of-living issues and is funded by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The DWP has granted a three-year payment plan to Hertfordshire County Council made up of £9.1 million a year for 2026-27 and 2027-28, rising to £11.4m in 2028-29.
The scheme is often used for crisis payments, with cash grants being made to cover costs of food, hygiene essentials, utilities and travel costs, usually handed out by district councils.
Other purposes include housing payments and budgeting advice for debts, welfare and energy, as well as community co-ordination with other stakeholders.
Besides district councils, the funds are distributed by specialist charities such as Citizens Advice and Age UK.
But a key change with administration of the CRF is the scrapping of holiday food vouchers for children receiving free school meals. This is partly due to reduced funding and partly due to new Government guidance which specifically instructs councils to end the “blanket delivery” of vouchers in the summer holidays.
It is unknown at present how many of the 32,000 children claiming free school meals in Hertfordshire will be affected.
The report to councillors notes: “Whilst CRF cannot continue some of the support from Household Support Fund due to restrictions, including holiday food vouchers for children in receipt of benefits-related free school meals, it can still be used to support those most in need.”
The fund was discussed at a meeting of Hertfordshire County Council’s adult care services cabinet panel on Thursday, March 5.
Kristy Thakur, head of community and people wellbeing, said: “As some of you will remember, the Household Support Fund (HSF) came out of that post-COVID, cost-of-living crisis. It was meant to be a short-term grant but it was extended.
“We weren’t often given that much notice of when it was going to be extended and we weren’t able to do as much planning as we would have liked, so we really welcome the fact that the Crisis and Resilience Fund is going to be a three-year grant.
“The CRF is replacing the HSF, but there was a question about whether it would also replace Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP). To be clear, DHPs are staying with the districts and boroughs.”
Ms Thakur said this could change in the third year of the grant, when unitary authorities are expected to be formed, with DHP “coming into” the CRF.
George Gearing, commissioning manager, said there were marked differences in how the CRF would be used compared to the old HSF.
“One of the biggest changes is that previously, under every funding round of the HSF, we supported benefits-related free school meal families with a food voucher for a holiday period,” he said.
“Within the CRF there isn’t the capacity to do that. One, because the funding has dropped quite significantly. It costs around £5 million to do the holiday vouchers for families receiving £165 each year for that. You can see very clearly for £9.1 million, that would take an awful lot of that funding away.”
Figures show the most recent HSF, for 2025-26, was £10.8m and had stood at £12.3m in each of the previous two years.
Mr Gearing said: “It should also be noted that guidance from the Government has been very clear that they want local authorities to move away from what they call ‘blanket delivery of food vouchers’ for certain cohorts, as they see it as more effective to target support to needed families.
“So in response to that, we’ve decided to establish a Children and Families Crisis Support Fund. This will be funded to the tune of £1.8 million for each year. It will be an application-based programme for professionals to apply on behalf of the family.
“We’re linking the criteria for this fund to the Government’s child poverty strategy and, in particular, the category of ‘deep material poverty’.”
Under the Children and Families Crisis Support Fund, families in need - who are already on the radar of social services - will be asked whether they can afford 13 items identified by the public as the most essential, covering basic needs such as food, heating and housing.
If a family is lacking four or more of these items for financial reasons, they are judged to be in “deep material poverty”.
Mr Gearing added: “So yes, it will be an application via a professional… the idea being that we can get some immediate support into that family to resolve a crisis.”