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The Department for Education yesterday (June 28th) revealed that funding for UIFSM would rise from £2.41 per meal to £2.53. The rate remained unchanged from 2013, when the policy was first introduced, before rising to £2.34 in 2021 and then up to £2.41 last year.

Interviewed on Radio 4’s flagship current affairs Today programme, Brad said: “This is absolutely nowhere near enough. What we are looking at here is a rate of £2.53, which is just a 10% increase in the funding rate over ten years.

“In that same period the National Living Wage has gone up by more than 60% and food price inflation over the last 12 months has gone up between 50% and 70% for the staple items we need to provide.

“So there is a real crisis building in terms of labour and food costs.”

He pointed to the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies finding which recognised that if UIFSM funding had kept pace with inflation since the policy was introduced in 2013 it would now be £2.87 per meal.

“So we have still got a significant shortfall in the amount of funding that has been made available.”

“Our members have told us they have had to make decisions around exceeding (sic) those standards or barely meeting them, reducing the amounts of meat and replacing it with other proteins in pulses or lentils.

“But certainly the meals will need to be affected at some point because we simply can’t continue with the food costs that we’ve seen.

“And despite food inflation dipping a little last month that’s still 14.5% on top of the 50%-70% we’re already seeing.”