As of February 2022, the FSM vouchers supplied ‘out of term time’ (i.e. during the holiday periods) were stopped by the Government. Instead, families in receipt of benefits, would be eligible for funding through the “Household Support Fund” this is designed to provide more support than just “out of term food vouchers” for eligible families, and this funding has been paid directly to local authorities who will distribute these funds.
Nottinghamshire County Council are now in the process of disseminating this funding and this is explained on their website :
https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/business-community/cost-of-living-support/household-support-fund-phase-3
and
https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/newsroom/news/700k-package-of-support-planned-to-help-with-the-c?utm_campaign=&utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=
As a group of Independent Schools, we have been working hard to gain access to this fund for our parents, and in order to facilitate this we have been asked by Nottinghamshire County Council, who are using “FSM status” as the eligibility criteria to access the fund, to collate a list of parents who are in receipt of benefits that entitle them to FSM and this we completed in October.
Thank you to those of you who have already completed the form, and if you have not managed to do it yet, the link is here and will be live until the 26th November 2022.
Since 12th October we have been messaging Nottinghamshire LA weekly to get an update on this matter, currently we are told NCC are still working towards agreeing how to distribute these funds and the latest information we have received is that they are looking to have this in place once Nottinghamshire County Council publicise these details as explained on their website.
Once we have this information we will contact all those registered on our list as to next steps.
