PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(13 November 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions, as announced in the Autumn Budget 2024, on the ability of school meals providers to provide those meals within the existing fixed price cost of £2.53.

Asked by:
Sir Christopher Chope (Conservative)

The government will provide funding to the public sector to support them with the additional costs associated with changes to Employers National Insurance Contributions policy.

This funding will be additional to the £2.3 billion increase to core school budgets announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. Due to timing constraints, this compensation will need to be provided as a separate grant, alongside the national funding formula (NFF), in 2025/26. Schools will continue to have autonomy over their spending and will be able to use any future grant funding to cover all cost increases, including food costs.

The department currently allocates a meal rate of £2.53 per child per meal for the 2024/2025 academic year to support the delivery of universal infant free school meals and further education free meals. Final funding rates for the 2024/2025 academic year will be confirmed in due course. Further to this, we fund benefits-related free school meals (FSM) at £490 per eligible pupil annually through the FSM factor of the NFF for schools. In total, we spend £1.5 billion across these programmes.

This funding is intended to cover the broad costs of meal provision. However, schools have considerable autonomy over delivery of FSM, including entering into contracts with suppliers and allocation of funding within their budgets.

Answered by:
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1 January 1970