The scheme for primary school pupils in London is set to cost City Hall £151m next year, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has promised to protect funding for free school meals in primary schools as long as he remains in post.
Khan, who launched the programme in September 2023, yesterday hailed the scheme as a “huge success” as he marked 100 million free meals being served to the capital’s schoolchildren.
The Greater London Authority (GLA) budgeted £148million for free school meals in 2025/26, rising to £151m next year. This represents around a third of City Hall’s net revenue expenditure budget for various GLA projects.
Despite a £19.2m funding gap, the mayor said that free school meals funding would not be touched to make up any deficit.
During a visit to Shoreditch Park Primary School last week, he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “I’m really pleased and proud that we’ve passed a really important landmark, which is 100 million free school meals that have been provided to kids across our city.
“We know the difference it makes to families – for each child, there’s an annual saving of £500. Imagine you’ve got three or four kids and the difference it’s made over the last three years.
“We know children are attending school more, they’re concentrating better, they’re doing a lot better in classrooms. The parents now aren’t skipping meals to, you know, make sure their kids eat properly.
“The teachers are saying it’s about relationship between schools and parents as a consequence of not chasing school dinner debt. So I’m quite clear this policy has been a huge success and it’s working.
“As long as I’m there, this is a priority for me, as long as I’m there children who go to state primary schools will receive a free school meal.”
All state primary school children in London have been offered free school meals since September 2023 under the scheme, meaning every pupil has been offered 435 lunches over the last two years.
City Hall officials estimate this saves families around £500 per child every year.
Celebrity chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver said: “Kids in London are properly fuelled to learn, thanks to the mayor. Serving 100 million free school meals is an amazing achievement.
“For families feeling the squeeze, easing financial pressure is priceless but free school meals deliver even more than that.
“When we feed kids well, the benefits are profound – better attendance, better grades, better jobs and over 20 years that stacks up to an extra £40 billion back into the economy.”
Under the previous national free school meals system, pupils in years three to six, known as ‘key stage two’, were only offered free meals if they met strict eligibility criteria. Changes announced in June, however, means that all households across the UK receiving Universal Credit will be able to access free school meals from next September.
Earlier this week Neil Garratt, chair of the London Assembly budget and performance committee, wrote to the mayor to clarify “whether the provision of a new entitlement funded by the government will reduce the amount required to fund the mayor’s initiative.”
He added: “There are many elements of the current budget that are necessarily unclear, but this particular announcement was made over four months ago so this committee was disappointed to hear at our meeting that the financial impact of the new government policy on the mayor’s budget had not yet been assessed.”
Khan told the LDRS that his team would need to “wait and see” the impact of the government’s rollout before coming to a conclusion.
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