Plymouth City Council’s library service joined up with CATERed, a co-operative trading company for its Big Summer Food Tour over the summer for Lunch at the Library. Every Wednesday in August children were able to pick up a free lunch and join in with family friendly activities. By joining up library services with CATERed’s Big Summer Food Tour, Plymouth helped those who may struggle to provide food and entertainment for children over the holiday period.

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Lambeth Council was selected by the Mayor of London to be a Food Flagship Partnership borough which shaped a healthy food system for local residents, sustained improvements in school meals, made healthy eating more affordable and expanding food growing across Lambeth including in GPs’ surgeries. In summer 2018, the council piloted a ‘Holiday Hunger’ scheme supported by the Mayor of London. Brixton Library and Brixton Soup Kitchen as well as other local businesses offered hot meals for families with Brixton Library targeting families living in food poverty.  A total of 19 families, 22 adults and 40 children participated in the scheme with 371 meals were provided throughout the sessions.

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Other Labour councils have set up schemes to tackle holiday hunger. In summer 2018, Islington Council piloted a scheme that provided healthy lunches and activities to 750 children in three locations. “Lunch Bunch” provides meals to children from low income families who may otherwise not be able to eat in the schools holidays. Along with three partners, Greenwich Council provided free meals to school aged children in summer 2018 using surplus food from Fareshare, a local charity that stops food from going to waste. The project delivered 4560 meals across 10 centres in the borough over the summer holiday period.