Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people have participated in the Holiday Activities Programme since that programme was launched.

This year the government invested over £200 million in the department’s Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, with all Local Authorities in England delivering in the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays and continuing to do so until March 2025.

The HAF programme provides heathy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places to children from low-income families, benefiting their health, wellbeing and learning.

During the pilot phase of the programme in 2018, the HAF programme reached around 18,000 children across the country. In 2019, the HAF programme reached around 50,000 children in 11 Local Authority areas, and in 2020, the programme reached around 50,000 children across 17 Local Authority areas. The HAF programme was rolled out nationally in England, to all areas in 2021 and reached over 685,000 children and young people in summer 2022, including over 475,000 children eligible for free school meals.

The 2023 data is not yet available.