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“There’s often half the month where I’m living off my credit cards,” confesses Kirsty, a single mother of three. “Money runs out quickly.”
She claims Universal Credit and her youngest child goes to pre-school three days a week, so she requires packed lunches. “I often spend over £10 every few days on lunchbox items including bread, cheese, butter, crisps, yoghurt, fruit… it adds up to a very scary amount very quickly.”
And this situation is likely to continue for millions of disadvantaged young children, despite the government Plan to extend free school meals According to a new report, next year.
Nearly 290,000 children under five will not get free meals as the extension will not be extended to most Nursery and Child Care SettingsExperts at food policy research group Bremner & Company found.
Sponsored by The Food Foundation, Impact on Urban Health and the Early Years Food Coalition, the report found that this would lead to “gross inequality” between childcare settings, urging the government to ensure the policy reaches all children.
While around 30 per cent of pupils in schools would receive free school meals following the expansion to include all Universal Credit households from September 2026, researchers found that only 4 per cent children in formal child care Similar provision will be received.
These will only be children who attend state-funded early years full-time and are successfully registered for meals. After the expansion, the number of children in these settings is expected to increase from 24,000 to 39,000 – far less than the number who will be left out.
Charlotte March, 37, from Essex is a single mother of a three-year-old in a private nursery. She works part-time, she claims universal creditBut at the end of the month they have to bear the heavy burden of nursery bills to pay for the food provided by them.
“I have no choice but to pay for the food. Even though it would be cheaper for me to provide them myself, the nursery does not allow this due to allergies, which I completely understand,” she explained.
Many nursery workers interviewed for the research said they feed eligible children out of their own budgets, leading to a loss of £70,000 a year in one case. However, it is unlikely that many settings will be able to continue to do so, as the sector is increasingly warning Serious shortage of money.
Sharon Hodgson, Labor The MP and chair of the school meals all-party parliamentary group said: “It is shocking that in 2025, so many of our young children will be missing out on free meals simply because of where they are looked after.
“Ministers must consider this inequality and take action to ensure every child has access to healthy food, regardless of setting or paperwork.”
along with the expansion free school meals For all children in Universal Credit families, regardless of childcare setting, the researchers recommend introducing automatic registration to ensure no child is left out when eligible.
Labor MP Simon Offer said: “Giving free meals to all children in Universal Credit homes and making enrollment automatic is a simple, fair and cost-effective step that will change lives by benefiting thousands of people.” poverty,
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat MP Jess Brown-Fuller called the findings “shocking”, urging the government to review its policy.
This research has come to light when child poverty in Britain continues to reach record levels. The latest figures show that three in ten children in the country are now living in poverty, rising from 4.3 million to 4.5 million between 2023 and 2024.
The Bremner & Company report found that this was a modest increase in the number of families with the youngest child under the age of five living in poverty, to 36 percent.
It is possible that these figures – last recorded in the year to April 2024 – have increased since then, with experts from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) estimating that 109 children are driven into poverty every day due to the impact of the two-child benefit cap.
This is the controversial Conservative-era policy that prevents Guardian from claiming Universal Credit for any child, other than the second child, who is held by the Government Has so far refused to bow to the pressure of scrapIn recent weeks Labor ministers, including Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, have hinted that it could be scrapped by 2026.
Dr Hannah Brinsden, head of policy and advocacy at The Food Foundation, said: “It is a huge mistake by the Government that they have taken the positive step of offering free school meals to all school-age children whose families are on Universal Credit, yet there are almost 300,000 vulnerable children living in Universal Credit households who are missing out.
“This urgently needs to be fixed if the Government is to prove it is serious about giving children the best start in life and creating the healthiest generation of children ever.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Through our plan for change, this Government has taken a historic step forward to tackle the scourge of child poverty – offering free school meals to every single child in a family claiming Universal Credit.
“The new entitlement will allow more than half a million children to benefit from free meals from next school year and lift 100,000 children out of poverty.
“As part of the extension, we have announced that school-based nursery children whose families receive Universal Credit will be eligible for free meals from September 2026.”