ADD2497 Funding for Kitchen Social to support local authorities

1.1. Mayoral Decision (MD) 2732 in December 2021 authorised expenditure of £900,000 from the GLA 2020-21 Recovery Fund on projects falling within or complementing the ‘Robust Safety Net’ recovery mission. That MD indicated that further proposals would be brought forward via a separate decision document with respect to the remaining £100,000 from the mission’s allocation.

1.2. Following the return to a situation of national lockdown early in the New Year, officers and mission leads have considered options to complement the work already being planned to underpin London’s long-term recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic, with shorter-term programmes that would speak to imperatives and opportunities that would likely emerge in the coming 4-6 weeks.

1.3. This ADD proposes using £49,000 of that remaining £100,000 to address one such shorter-term imperative.

1.4. In the first lockdown (March-August), 2.3 million children experienced food insecurity and during the 2020 summer holidays 850,000 children reported that they or their families visited a food bank . School holidays have always been particular pressure points for some families because of increased costs such as food and childcare and Covid-19 has exacerbated this.

1.5. In November 2020, the Government announced a significant funding package to help alleviate child food poverty in the UK in response to sustained pressure from a range of campaigners including the footballer Marcus Rashford. One element of that package was a £220m extension of the holiday activities and food (HAF) programme to cover the whole nation so that provision is available in all local authority areas over the Easter, Summer and Christmas holidays in 2021. Under the programme, local authorities will receive grant funding to co-ordinate free holiday provision for eligible children – a role many will not have played before. As a result, there is a risk that the quality of the provision will vary significantly across London.

1.6. By virtue of its position as the largest provider of food and activities for children in London during the school holidays, Kitchen Social - a holiday food and activity programme consisting of a network of community organisations across 24 boroughs and run by the Mayor’s Fund for London (‘Mayor’s Fund’) – is uniquely well-placed to support local authorities to prepare to take on their new responsibilities.

1.7. While there are other providers of holiday food nationwide, we are confident that there are no other London based organisations who can provide this strategic London-wide support and within the timeframe required. The Mayor’s Fund have a wide London coverage, understand the London infrastructure and have previously developed and delivered an independently evaluated model of holiday food provision (Healthy Living Labs, University of Northumbria). In addition, the Mayor’s Fund are the only non-London borough to have any experience in delivering the DfE’s Holiday Food and Activities Programme and their Head of Social Inclusion is on the DfE HAF Advisory Board. This puts them in a unique position to support local authorities in London, many of whom have not been previously involved in the delivery or commissioning of holiday provision before now.

1.8. Grant funding has been determined as the most appropriate method of service delivery in accordance with Section 4 of the GLA’s Contracts and Funding Code, whose provisions will be followed.

2.1. The expenditure authorised by this decision would be used to make a grant award to the Mayor’s Fund to use the Kitchen Social programme to support London’s local authorities to deliver and/or commission the delivery of the DfE’s HAF programme in 2021. The Mayor’s Fund will provide support to local authorities in the form of training, materials and quality assurance in advance of them receiving this funding and commissioning provision.

2.2. By investing in the skills and knowledge of local authorities and their partners in early 2021, there is the ability to fast track learning and help ensure high quality delivery or commissioning of holiday activity programmes in London. There is also the potential to position London as a leading region and to generate high quality outcomes which, in turn, could be used to make the case for permanent funding from central Government.

2.3. The funding given to the Mayor’s Fund would be spent on:

• the overhaul of existing Kitchen Social support materials to produce a free-to-use toolkit on how to run and/or commission inclusive, high quality holiday provision, plus a set of template documents to support programme delivery;

• the development and delivery of a training programme for local authorities and their partners; and

• the development of Kitchen’s Social quality assurance process to make it fit for purpose for the HAF programme.

2.4. The activities, outputs, outcomes and costings associated with this work can be found below:

2.5. GLA officers will work on a grant agreement that will capture all of the objectives that we expect to be achieved with the funding provided. This will be signed following the approval sought through this ADD. No grant funding will be provided to the Mayor’s Fund for London until after this agreement has been entered into.

2.6. It is anticipated that £32,000 of the total grant will be spent in financial year 20/21 with the remainder of the expenditure in Q1 of financial year 21/22.

3.1. The Survey of Londoners revealed that 1.5m adults and 400,000 children in London were experiencing food insecurity before Covid-19 . Single parents, disabled Londoners and Black Londoners were found to be more likely to experience low or very low food security.

3.2. Obesity prevalence is twice as high for children living in the most deprived areas in London compared to those living in the least deprived areas.

3.3. The HAF programme is a targeted intervention to reduce inequalities experienced by London’s children and young people from low-income households during the school holidays. Working in partnership with the Mayor’s Fund for London will help local authorities to reduce the risk of poor-quality food being delivered to London’s most disadvantaged children.

a) key risks and issues

4.1. The team will provide oversight of delivery against a grant agreement. The key risks and issues are outlined below:

• Risk – The Mayor’s Fund fail to deliver resources to expected quality or to time.

• Mitigation – GLA officers will build in a series of milestones into the grant agreement and will maintain regular communication with the Mayor’s Fund to monitor progress. The GLA Food Team have worked with and provided grant funding to The Mayor’s Fund for the last five years and have seen first-hand the quality of their work. They have delivered on many contracts, including on the DfE HAF scheme last year which had to be independently audited as it was a c. £900k contract. No issues arose from this audit and the GLA have not experienced any issues with the quality of the work we have funded either.

b) links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

4.2. In terms of Mayoral Strategies, grant funding the Kitchen Social programme will contribute towards:

• Supporting young people to access high quality food and activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby reducing household food insecurity. This is a major focus of the London Food Strategy which highlights that 20% of parents in London have ‘skipped meals so that their children can eat’ and 8% have reported that their children have missed meals due to poverty. These figures are now likely to be much higher.

c) Conflicts of interest

4.3. There are no conflicts of interest to note for any of the officers involved in the drafting or clearance of this decision form.

5.1 Approval is sought for expenditure of £49,000 to support London’s local authorities to deliver the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme in the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays in 2021.

5.2 The expenditure will be funded from the 2020/21 ‘Recovery Fund’ [approved by MD2666] and allocated to the CSP Unit Budget.

5.3 The future years budget is indicative and subject to the GLA budget setting process.