Holiday Activity and Food Programme agreed in Preston for 2025/2026

Following the Full Council meeting on 30 January, Preston City Council agreed to accept funding of up to £600,000 to deliver the Holiday Activity and Food programme (HAF) in Preston.

The HAF programme is an initiative funded by the Department for Education for the delivery of food, along with activities for children aged between 5 - 19 years, during the school holidays.

A competitive grant application process for providers wishing to deliver elements of the programme from April 2025 will now be put into place.

The programme provides healthy meals, enriching activities, and free childcare places to children from low-income families, benefiting their health, wellbeing and learning. It is primarily aimed at children in receipt of benefits related free school meals but is not exclusively for them and successful providers will be able to use up to 15% of their funding to provide free or subsidised holiday club places for children who are not in receipt of benefits, but those who the local authority believe could benefit from the initiative.

Councillor Zafar Coupland, Cabinet member for Health and Wellbeing, said:

"As a result of this programme, the children attending the activities and accessing the food programme will benefit from being active and eating healthily during the school holidays and will have a greater knowledge of health and nutrition to help them in the future.

"This is a very important initiative, and I hope the children and young people who take part in the engaging and enriching activities take advantage of the support available in developing resilience, character and wellbeing."

More information

• The expansion of the programme year-on-year has meant a total of 5.4 million HAF days provided between Christmas 2022, Easter and Summer 2023. For several years, local authority areas across Lancashire have been allocated Department of Education funding from Lancashire County Council to provide a funded HAF programme. Since 2022, the HAF programme has provided 10.7 million HAF days to children and young people in this country.
• With a new contract period under negotiation to start in April 2025, there is an opportunity for Preston City Council to manage the HAF programme in-house to build on the work done previously by an external agency. This would enable the provision of further opportunities for providers due to an increase in capacity and skills at the Council. Lancashire County Council would now prefer a direct award to Preston City Council for simplicity.
• This funding is for one year only and ends on 31 March 2026.
• Full details on this funding can be found in the Council HAF report - January 2025
• Preston City Council actively applies and prioritises the principles of Community Wealth Building wherever applicable and appropriate. Community Wealth Building is an approach which aims to ensure the economic system builds wealth and prosperity for everyone.