The mayor of London Sadiq Khan will not extend his free school meals scheme for primary school students over the next academic year if re-elected due to a lack of funding reserves.
The initiative was launched in September to provide all state primary school children in the capital with free school meals for the whole academic year. So far this term, 17 million free school meals have been funded.
City Hall provided £135m to deliver the scheme, supporting London families through the cost-of-living crisis and saving them upwards of £440 per child over the year.
Khan said: “We were very clear that this was one year emergency funding. We managed to find the money for this scheme using our reserves, but we cannot continue using them because once used, they are gone.
