Free School Meals: Voucher Schemes

(asked on 18th May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the (a) value of and (b) performance against key performance indicators of the Government’s contract with Edenred to administer the free school meals voucher scheme during the covid-19 outbreak since the inception of that scheme.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 2nd June 2020

As both my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have made clear, the Government will do whatever it takes to support people affected by COVID-19.

Our latest guidance for schools and other educational settings is set out below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-schools-and-other-educational-settings.

These are rapidly developing circumstances; we continue to keep the situation under review and will keep Parliament updated accordingly.

The Department for Education made an award of a contract to Edenred pursuant to Regulation 32(2)(c) Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to provide extremely urgent deliverables as part of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The contract was let as a direct award using the terms of an existing Crown Commercial Service framework. The department can confirm that we are only paying for the face value of goods delivered – in this case, vouchers.

We continue to work very closely with our supplier, Edenred, to improve the performance of the national free school meals voucher scheme, including by reducing waiting times experienced by schools, parents and carers on the ordering and redemption sites. Edenred reported that over £101.5 million worth of voucher codes has been redeemed into supermarket eGift cards by schools and families through the scheme as of Friday 22 May.

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