Renewing the Holiday Activities and Food Programme: A pillar of support for low income families

This guest post was written by Jed Meers, Hayley Bennett, Ruth Patrick, Rhiannon Sims, Beth Watts-Cobbe, David Young

Writing on this blog three years ago, Duncan Hadfield argued that support for low income households was increasingly characterised by a reliance on a smorgasbord of ‘discretionary and piecemeal support’ delivered at local authority level.

Alongside the longstanding canon of these funds – Discretionary Housing Payments, Council Tax Support, Free School Meals, etc – were the newly formed £1 billion per annum Household Support Fund (initially, the COVID Support Grants) and the £220 million per annum ‘Holiday Activities and Food Programme’ (HAF) for local authorities in England.

The Household Support Fund has suffered from a last minute ‘hockey cokey’ approach to renewal – with last minute six month or twelve month extensions, sometimes a matter of days before expiry. Just two weeks ago, the Government has now confirmed that it will be renewed into a sixth wave until March 2025.

However, at the time of writing, the future of the Holiday Activities and Food Programme, which is due to expire that same month, remains uncertain.

These issues are central to our new Nuffield Foundation funded project ‘Safety Nets: Social Security for families in a Devolved UK’ which is the first ever project to offer a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between social security and devolution in the UK. As part of this, we are examining emergency funding across the UK, exploring devolved programmes and local discretionary funds, such as those outlined above.

Drawing on interviews with 12 local authorities from the first step of our devolved local welfare provision workstream, we highlight three key points in this blog post when looking ahead to the future of the HAF:

1. • The importance of a multi year extension for the duration of this Parliament

• • Its impact on third sector providers

• • How more flexibility could be given to local authorities in future guidance on the scheme.

1. The power of predictability: A long extension improves the quality of provision

After a series of pilots dating back to 2018, the HAF has been in place in its current form since 2021: a £220 million per annum scheme distributed across all 153 upper tier local authorities in England, to coordinate free holiday activities and healthy food aimed at children up to age 16 eligible for means tested free school meals.

Knowing funds would be in place from its launch until March 2025 allowed Local Authorities to plan effectively and build relationships with providers. Our participants underscored how the grant length was ‘absolutely fundamental’ to ensuring the success of the scheme and any renewal should avoid the kind knee jerk, short term extension that has characterised the Household Support Fund:

I think grant length is absolutely fundamental for something like HAF specifically, the length of the grant is completely and utterly make or break for it. If they extend it for a year, it’s really it’s nothing more than almost a year to just tide over until they can make a longer extension. Really, they need to extend it for a long period of time or not at all.
Local authority participant

Knowing the funding is in place for a number of years allows for ‘smarter and more strategic’ decisions about the design and operation of the scheme, building on what authorities have learnt in the last four years.

I think just having that window of time for planning is just really, really valuable… if you’d known four years ago that this was going to just carry on and carry on, you could have I mean, just having the time to plan allows you to make much smarter and more strategic decisions about the way that things are done.
Local authority participant

One of the most acute impacts of a lack of certainty is on staffing. Indeed, many of those we interviewed were on fixed-term contracts dependent on funding for the scheme being renewed past March 2025 – concerns about staff leaving ahead of information about its renewal were widespread across our sample:

…a couple of our admin staff… are looking for alternative jobs because they are worried. So… it’s worrying in that sense. But in terms of delivering the programme we’ve got to think about Easter because… we’ve got the funding until Christmas. That’s obviously sorted. But then if we don’t know until… the beginning of next year, we’re potentially going to be left in a situation where we’ve got to pull together Easter provision very, very quickly. And we may not have the staff if they do go off and leave, we might not have the staff available to help do that.
Local authority participant

The challenges of short term and last minute renew extend beyond staffing, making it incredibly difficult for LAs to manage complex procurement arrangements with multiple providers – contracting for provision for next Easter and Summer gets more challenging the longer the decision is left.

2. An eco system of providers: The HAF supports a wide range of third sector organisations

Much like other areas of local welfare provision, the HAF relies on the engagement of a wide variety of organisations outside of the local authority itself – in particular, charities, social enterprises and community groups.

The HAF scheme provides an important funding stream for this ecosystem of providers across the country, particularly in the summer school holiday.

Decisions about the future of HAF provision therefore have ripple effects through the thousands of providers across the country. One participant highlighted that the removal of the HAF scheme could lead to some of these organisations disappearing altogether:

cohort that worked with us over five years that are probably heavily reliant on the funding for their children and young people within their provision. …But if this doesn’t come to fruition for them, it’s going to be really difficult.
Local authority participant

Indeed, one charity in the midlands outlined how their organisation had become reliant on HAF funding to sustain their activities:

…the largest proportion of our income comes from HAF. So we would if we lost HAF as an organisation, we would find it very, very difficult to navigate through and continue as a charity. … families are so dependent on holiday support… it would be absolutely criminal to take it away and it’d be catastrophic…for us, it’s really difficult to plan ahead …And I suppose that’s that is the problem, because what you’ll get is quite a lot of authorities won’t be able to mobilise quickly enough the provision if they’re getting late notice.
Third sector organisation

Much like the Household Support Fund, the scheme therefore occupies an important role in sustaining the local welfare ecosystem within a locality. Uncertainty in support, such as a short term renewal or holding off on a decision, impacts not just the local authorities, but the organisations they work with.

3. Devolving discretion: More flexibility should be given to local authorities in deciding the core offer

Compared to the other kinds of ‘discretionary and piecemeal support’ the Holiday Activities and Food Programme sits alongside, the accompanying guidance is drawn quite tightly by the Department of Education. Although local authorities have discretion in their operationalisation of the scheme, the eligibility requirements and ‘core offer’ of the HAF are more detailed than in other schemes. One issue that was raised continually by our participants was the requirement for 85% of children in the scheme to be in receipt of means tested Free School Meals.

Given the extent of need in their localities, local authorities considered themselves better placed to identify families who would benefit from HAF provision using their own eligibility criteria, such as targeting specific wards or groups with high levels of poverty, alongside receipt of means tested Free School Meals. Means tested Free School Meals provision was seen as an important part of this, but constraining their ability to target support effectively.

We’re probably operating at around about a 75 to 78% free school meals, okay, which is below what the DfE wants. So they’ve been putting a lot of pressure on local authorities over the last couple of years to increase that now. … We don’t believe it’s still fit for purpose, right? We think that poverty has impacted so massively that we’ve got a lot of working poor now who would benefit from the HAF programme and we just need to slightly change that… criteria instead of 85/15 maybe we should change it to 70 over 70/30, and with the 30% could be used by the local authorities to identify very poor families.
Local authority participant

Tying such a large proportion of the scheme to Free School Meals eligibility also raised concerns about stigma – both for those who would not consider themselves in sufficient financial difficulty to be eligible for the scheme and by splitting children from friends who are not eligible. This formed part of the reasoning for one of our participant local authorities changing the title of the scheme to focus more on ‘fun’ than ‘food’.

They are really struggling, but they’re not eligible for anything like this. … They wouldn’t see sort of the HAF advertising and say, oh, you know, financial difficulty… but they are struggling and they would like to access the programme… there is a whole cohort of people who are just above that threshold who really aren’t qualifying for the program, but would really benefit from it. There’s a lot of stigma attached to it as well. And that was one of the reasons as well, that you changed the name of the programme.
Local authority participant

Allowing local authorities more discretion in deciding eligibility criteria for the scheme, perhaps by reducing the Free School Meals requirement to nearer 70%, would allow more flexibility to target low income families in their locality that are most in need.

What needs to change

Our data suggests that the HAF has proven to be a vital support system for low income families across England. Its future beyond March 2025 remains uncertain, and the Government should act rapidly to remedy this, ensuring that there is ongoing support for this programme.

Beyond this, our research highlights three crucial considerations for policymakers:

1. • The importance of a multi year extension to allow for better planning and more strategic implementation by local authorities

• • The significant role the Holiday Activities and Food Programme plays in sustaining a diverse ecosystem of third sector providers

• • The need for greater flexibility in eligibility criteria to better target support and reduce stigma

As we approach the expiration date, it is imperative that the government addresses these factors to ensure the continued success and impact of the HAF programme. A timely decision on its future will not only benefit local authorities and providers but, most importantly, the families and children who rely on this essential support.

Acknowledgements

This paper is drawn from the Social Security in a Devolved UK project. This project has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation. Visit www.nuffieldfoundation.org

Thanks also to the local authority participants who contributed to this research.