Most children entitled to free holiday clubs, activities and a hot meal in England missed out last year, according to new research.
Around 2.1 million children qualify for the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, which costs Government more than £200m a year, but fewer than four in 10 attended even once last year.
A Freedom of Information investigation by Money Wellness covering 130 local authorities found median take-up across 102 councils with usable data was around 35%, with a quarter of councils below 25%.
Access varied sharply by area. In Haringey, 90% of eligible children attended at least one session, compared with just 9% in Norfolk, despite nearly 30,000 eligible children there. Sheffield, Blackburn with Darwen and Calderdale also posted strong take-up, while Leicestershire, Thurrock and Sutton recorded some of the lowest rates.
Despite low overall attendance, 90% of councils still applied waiting lists or caps, with many limiting bookings to a fraction of the full six-week entitlement.
Nine in 10 councils now use digital booking platforms, which some acknowledged can exclude families without reliable internet access or confidence using online systems.
Money Wellness is calling on the Government to set a national minimum expectation for HAF take-up, require non-digital booking routes, and publish consistent attendance data.
Comment:
Adam Rolfe, Policy and Public Affairs at Money Wellness, said: ‘The families we work with are stretched to breaking point over the summer. No childcare, no school meals, bills still coming in. HAF was designed to help exactly those families. The fact that most of them never get a place isn’t a data quirk; it’s a failure of delivery.’
