Parents 'struggled to get free school meal vouchers due to IT issues'

Parents faced major delays in accessing free school meal vouchers in the first lockdown as the private firm running the scheme lacked IT capacity. 

The Whitehall spending watchdog said French company Edenred had “insufficient” capacity to cope with demand for the temporary voucher scheme, with calls peaking at 3,940 per day in April. 

The number of emails it received soared to 8,878 in the same month, as schools and parents complained they could not get the help they needed, the National Audit Office said. 

Ministers were forced to intervene, with Edenred eventually upgrading its IT system so time taken to process orders fell from almost five days in April to a few hours by July. 

The report found the Department for Education did not know whether Edenred had made a profit from the chaotic scheme or how many children used the vouchers.

More than 10million vouchers were issued, which varied in value because they could cover more than one child in the same family and last more than one week. 

The final cost of the scheme was estimated to be £384 million in October. 

Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: “Edenred’s systems buckled under the pressure and schools and families found it much too difficult to get in touch when things went wrong. 

“DfE and Edenred eventually managed to turn things around, but too many parents had to wait too long to get the support they needed.”

Children’s Minister Vicky Ford said: “The NAO has recognised the swift action we took so that eligible children could access this important provision while schools were partially closed, with £380 million worth of voucher codes having been redeemed into supermarket gift cards by the time the scheme ended.”

The Government has faced sustained criticism over its free school meals provision during the pandemic.

Footballer Marcus Rashford forced Boris Johnson to u-turn twice on scrapping the scheme in the school holidays with a high-profile social media campaign.

Around 1.4million children in England were eligible for free school meals in January.