Categories:
All schools

Holiday Vouchers - Schools Holidays (HSF)

Sent on behalf of Kim Wilson, Assistant Director – Schools and Settings

Dear Schools and Early Years Providers 

Due to changes in government funding, the County Council will be ending the support in school holidays for households eligible for Free School Meals, Early Years Pupil Premium, and 2 year old Disadvantaged Entitlement Funding. This provision has been funded by the government’s Household Support Fund. A new funding programme has been introduced, which is effective from April 2026, called the Crisis & Resilience Fund. The new fund requires support to households to be based on an individual assessment of need. It specifies FSM holiday support as an area which local authorities must stop providing on a blanket basis. As such the one week of support for Easter will be the final payment made on this basis.

The County Council will be announcing a new funding programme in April. This will propose allocating funding into other areas of activity to support low-income families such as our Holiday Activities and Food programme and our new Family Hubs programme. We will also continue to maintain our Residents Support Scheme which households can apply to for one off crisis payments. Schools may wish to refer parents to this scheme which can be accessed from the following link: Oxfordshire Residents Support Scheme | Oxfordshire County Council or by calling 01865 804171.

In cases where you are owed money by the Council, we will provide the extra funding to both schools and early years in by end of April 2026.

In cases where you owe money to the Council, that discrepancy will be subtracted by end of April 2026.

Please note, there are two categories of children supported.

1) Children who are eligible for free school meals, 2YOF, or EYPP.

2) Children who are not eligible for FSM/2YOF/EYPP but have been supported at the discretion of education providers (“discretionary support”).

The forms below ask you to report these two groups separately—please do not double count when reporting.

We ask that you follow the appropriate link(s) below and report to us the information on the payments made.

N.B. Schools with Early Years provision: please complete both forms separately. Please only report support provided to children below year R on the Early Years form—do not duplicate reporting. Please do not report any Early Years expenditure on the schools form, nor Schools expenditure on the Early Years form.

You do not need to send spreadsheets with detailed information on individual recipients – we do not need this information and there is a risk of breaching data regulations.

Please complete this return by Friday 24th April 2026 - we will then make arrangements for any balancing payments to be made. 

Queries related to the data return should be directed to CSCHouseholdSupport@Oxfordshire.gov.uk 

 

Kind regards,

 

Kim Wilson

Assistant Director – Schools and Settings