![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_Free-school-meals-mapJPG.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBirminghamLive has previously reported how the city is amidst a child poverty epidemic – with more than half of children improverished in many areas<\/p>\n
13:43, 06 Jun 2025Updated 14:25, 06 Jun 2025<\/p>\n
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More than 120,000 children will feel some ease from shameful levels of child poverty thanks to a rise in free school meals.<\/p>\n
BirminghamLive has previously reported how the city is amidst a child poverty epidemic<\/a> – with more than half of children improverished in many areas.<\/p>\n As a result, a high number stand to benefit from an expansion of eligibility for free school meals.<\/p>\n Read more: Bull on the loose in Birmingham<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Expanding free school means was one of eight demands made in BirminghamLive’s Child Poverty Emergency campaign<\/a>, which highlighted the scale of the issue in the city.<\/p>\n Our reporters told stories of children stealing food from schools, going without basics like mattressess and the vast levels of health inequality, meaning a child born in poor parts of the city are likely to die younger and suffer from a host of ailments.<\/p>\n With Birmingham<\/a> and the wider West Midlands having a large number of areas with high levels of Universal Credit<\/a> claimants, a higher proportion of families will benefit from the free meals change than the UK average.<\/p>\n Extending the lifeline benefit to all children in families who get Universal Credit (UC) in England, could save parents up to \u00a3500 a year.<\/p>\n Birmingham: A Child Poverty Emergency Child poverty is soaring in Birmingham and without urgent change, will only get worse. Having worked with charities and community groups, BirminghamLive is campaigning for the following changes to start to turn the tide:<\/p>\n You can see why in more detail here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read our full report Birmingham: A Child Poverty Emergency here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What you can do to help<\/a>.<\/p>\n Currently, all children in England can get free school meals until the end of Year 2, but after that, they only qualify if their family earns less than \u00a37,400 a year after benefits.<\/p>\n In a huge expansion, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has now announced that from September 2026, all children in UC households will be able to get a free lunch.<\/p>\n In Birmingham, a total of 121,770 children will now be eligible for school meals.<\/p>\n More children will benefit in the Birmingham Ladywood constituency than anywhere else in our area. A total of 19,380 will now be eligible for free school meals, more than anywhere else in Birmingham.<\/p>\n In Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull<\/a> North, 17,150 children will be able to claim free meals, and in Birmingham Perry Barr<\/a>, 14,760 will be able to eat for free during the school term.<\/p>\n You can use our digital map to see the number of kids who live in UC households by constituency, as an estimate for how many kids will be eligible for free school meals across the country.<\/p>\n Our digital map uses the most recent data available, which was published in November. Figures are subject to change ahead of the announcement coming into force in September next year. The data does not include infants who receive free lunches at nurseries.<\/p>\n Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said: “Poverty robs children of opportunities and damages their future prospects. This is a moral scar on our society we are committed to tackling.<\/p>\n “By expanding Free School Meals to all families on Universal Credit, we\u2019re ending the impossible choice thousands of our hardest grafting families must make between paying bills and feeding their children.<\/p>\n “This is just the latest step of our Plan for Change to put extra pounds in people\u2019s pockets \u2013 a downpayment on our Child Poverty Strategy, building on our expansion of free breakfast clubs, our national minimum wage boost and our cap on Universal Credit deductions through the Fair Repayment Rate.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BirminghamLive has previously reported how the city is amidst a child poverty epidemic – with more than half…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,6331,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-164584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-child-poverty","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114639860241734204","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_CPE.png\")
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