A motion will be heard at a Nottinghamshire County Council full council meeting this week.
Below forms part of a motion to be discussed this week at a meeting of the full council – the motion has been put forward by Councillor Francis Purdue-Horan, Independent for Bingham East and Vice-Chairman of the Children and Families Select Committee and Councillor Debbie Darby, Independent for Collingham and a member of the committee.
Documents published ahead of the meeting state:
Nottinghamshire County Council believes that it should do everything possible to ensure that no child goes hungry.
This Council notes that according to information from the October 2022 school census, covering pupils in years R-11 in all primary, secondary and special schools in the county (including academies) there are 25,265 – 22.1% of all pupils claiming free school meals.
This Council further notes the following table which shows the highest number of school children ever claiming free school meals across Nottinghamshire.
This Council believes that there are children who may be entitled to free school meals but do not claim them for a variety of reasons.
This Council, therefore, resolves to increase Free School Meal take up by investigating whether Nottinghamshire County Council can:
1) Automatically enrol children onto free school meals, using existing Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction data.
2) Implement a policy of ‘opt-out’ meaning that those not aware of their entitlement can benefit from free school meals.
The council believes that this will significantly increase Free School Meal uptake in Nottinghamshire, which will lead to additional Pupil Premium Funding to help reduce the gap in attainment between children from higher and lower-income households.
