I’ve been concerned that thousands of children could miss out on this scheme because they don’t have a qualifying chain supermarket nearby.
Smaller retail shops like, the Co-op or local convenience stores, are a lifeline to so many families across the country and it feels like a monumental mistake to leave them out of this scheme. The Co-op exists to do social good, in our country’s hour of need we should be utilising all of the tools at our disposal to help those in need. And not including discount stores like Aldi and Lidl, where so many people now do their regular family shop is beggars’ belief.
It’s unreasonable to expect families to make multiple trips to multiple different supermarkets in order to do their regular shop and then to redeem the FSM vouchers, when government is telling us to leave the house as little as possible.
I’ve been liaising with the Department for Education about the hole in their scheme since it was announced, and it looks like there may finally be light at the end of the tunnel.
Last week I was informed that the DfE are close to coming to an arrangement to expand the scheme, so it should not be long before this mistake has been rectified.
Since I posted this on Facebook I’ve had a number of constituents come to me expressing concerns that they cannot get access to the Edenred website and that there are issues with generating codes for the vouchers, this is deeply worrying – especially after the website went down for a few days at the start of last week. If you’ve been affected by this please do not hesitate to let me know.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 