Kids get free lunches at Portsmouth's adventure playgrounds

Food Portsmouth has been running its Filling the Holiday Gap scheme this summer at Portsmouth City Council’s six adventure playgrounds.

They have been used in the pilot scheme which hands out free lunches to kids at the park.

It enables children from low-income families who are normally eligible for free school meals to continue to receive a filling, hot meal during the holidays.

Play workers have been helping to serve up a daily lunch of baked beans on toast to more than 100 children every week.

The beans have been donated through foodbanks and the bread from FoodCycle Portsmouth.

Megan Saunders, who heads Food Portsmouth and led the pilot project, said: ‘The project has been a great success this summer due to the hard work and support from all those involved – it’s a great demonstration of the power of partnership working. The pilot will now be evaluated to assess its impact on those involved.’

Portsmouth City Council’s cabinet member for property and housing, Cllr Steve Wemyss added: ‘I’d like to extend a huge thank you to Food Portsmouth, FoodCycle and the numerous food banks who have made this possible over the summer.

‘Schemes like this make such a difference to the people that use them.’