Healthy Holidays is the local name for the Department for Education’s Holiday Activity and Food Programme (HAF). The programme provides funding for clubs over the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays, principally for children eligible for benefits-related Free School Meals, with a 15% flexibility to include other children who are ineligible for income-related free school meals but are in need of support and would benefit from the programme.
The Holidays Activity and Food Programme aims to provide physical and enriching activities together with a hot meal to eligible children and young people. The programme seeks to promote nutritional education and healthy lifestyle messages as well as offering opportunities to signpost families to additional resources and support.
- Healthy Holidays Leeds
- Funding
- Unique children reached
- Steering group
- Delivery partners
- Marketing and promotion
- Extra funding, support, resources and food
- Highlights: Successes and challenges of the programme
- Food offer
- Enriching activity
- Physical activity
- Nutritional education
- Signposting and referrals
Healthy Holidays Leeds
If only we could bottle what the clubs do for all our children!
The Healthy Holidays programme in Leeds is coordinated by the council’s Financial Inclusion Team and is delivered via 3 separate strands of provision, namely schools, third sector and Leeds City Council. The schools and Leeds City Council programmes are funded and managed centrally, with the third sector provision being commissioned by Leeds Community Foundation on behalf of and in close conjunction with the Financial Inclusion Team’s Healthy Holidays Coordinator. This joint approach ensures consistency in terms of quality and enables the sharing of best practice across the city’s programme.
Funding 2025-26
| Department for Education funding for Leeds 2025 | £3,413,390 |
| Administrative expenditure (this includes all of the costs Leeds City Council have incurred in carrying out the administrative functions of the HAF coordination). | £341,339 |
Unique children reached
| Easter | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 1,283 | 350 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 224 | 48 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 150 | 75 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 19 | 7 |
| Total number of attendees | 1,676 | 480 |
| Summer | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 3,174 | 536 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 437 | 88 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 369 | 123 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 87 | 14 |
| Total number of attendees | 4,067 | 761 |
| Christmas | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 1,049 | 521 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 163 | 87 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 161 | 91 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 32 | 29 |
| Total number of attendees | 1,405 | 728 |
| Yearly total | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 5,506 | 1,407 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 824 | 223 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 680 | 289 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 138 | 50 |
| TOTAL number of attendees | 7,148 | 1,969 |
| Total = 9117 |
Steering group
- Leeds Community Foundation
- Fareshare Yorkshire
- Rethink Food
- Hamara
- Give A Gift
- Leeds City Council – Chief Officer Community Hubs, Welfare and Business Support
- Leeds City Council – Youth Service
- Leeds City Council – Public Health
- Leeds City Council – Active Leeds
- Leeds City Council – Breeze
- Leeds City Council – Children and Families
- Leeds City Council – Financial Inclusion
- Leeds City Council – Communities
- Leeds City Council – Catering Leeds
Delivery partners
Schools
- 2Gether Cluster
- All Saints Primary School
- Alwoodley Primary School
- Beeston Primary School
- Bishop Young Academy
- Castleton Primary School
- Co-op Brierley Special School
- Co-op Collaboration Cluster
- Grimes Dyke Primary School
- Headingley and Kirkstall Schools Cluster
- Hovingham Primary School
- Ingram Road Primary School
- Inner East Schools Cluster A
- JESS Schools Cluster
- Leeds City Academy
- Leeds City College
- Leeds West Academy
- Manor Wood Primary School
- Middleton Primary School
- Morley Cluster
- Mount St Mary's Catholic High School
- Park Spring Primary
- Parklands Primary School
- Ralph Thoresby School
- Reach Primary Learning Centre
- Roundhay School
- Seacroft Manston Cluster
- Shakespeare Primary School
- Southroyd Primary School
- St Bartholomew's Primary School
- St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School – Hunslet
- St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School – Pudsey
- Strawberry Fields Primary School
- Temple Learning Academy
- Trinity Academy Leeds
- West SILC
Third Sector
- BARCA Leeds
- CATCH Leeds
- Champions Community Sport and Health CIC
- Complete Woman CIC
- Connecting Crossgates
- Cross Green Growing Together
- Dance Action Zone Leeds
- Getaway Girls
- GIPSIL
- Give a Gift
- Guiseley Community Foundation
- Hamara Healthy Living Centre
- Health for All (Middleton and Belle Isle)
- Health for All (Swarcliffe and Whinmoor)
- Health for All (Beeston and Cottingley)
- Holbeck Together
- Hunslet Club
- Hunslet Rugby Foundation
- Hyde Park Source
- Kicking For Grassroots CIC
- Leeds GATE Gypsy and Traveller Exchange
- Leeds Mencap
- Leeds United Foundation (Beeston)
- Leeds United Foundation (Burmantofts/Richmond Hill)
- Leeds United Foundation (Halton Moor)
- Leeds United Foundation (Hunslet)
- LS-TEN
- New Wortley Community Association
- Phoenix Dance
- Reestablish
- Seacroft Community on Top
- St Luke’s Cares
- The Zone
Leeds City Council
- Armley Community Hub and Library
- Dewsbury Road Community Hub and Library
- Thackray Museum of Medicine
- Reginald Centre Community Hub and Library
- Breeze Little London
- Breeze South Leeds Youth Hub
- Breeze Bramley St Peter’s Primary School
- Breeze – New Farnley Community Centre
- Hyde Park Picture House
Marketing and promotion
Healthy Holidays in Leeds during 2025 was promoted in numerous ways reflecting the multiple strands of provision in the city but included social media, Leeds City Council and provider websites, traditional flyers and banners as well as direct mailings, both electronic and in letter form, from Healthy Holidays and through schools and third sector partners. As with every year, we have anecdotal evidence that word of mouth played its part in the promotion of the scheme. We continued with promotion of the booking system, encouraging eligible families to register for the scheme and this included the use of a local authority billboard site in Armley, an area of high need.
Celebration of the programme took place through social media, traditional media, including local broadcast news, provider celebration events and presentations to our stakeholders.
Extra funding, support, resources and food
During 2025, Healthy Holidays providers told us they linked and forged partnerships with other organisations to support their programmes, including commercial retail partners. Centrally, the Programme continued to receive periodic support through a local Community Champion for Morrisons and have distributed small but regular donations to some of our providers. Internal council services and external partners were also funded to support and enhance provision. This included food from FareShare, Rethink, Give a Gift, Hamara, and exciting experience sessions, such as through West Leeds Activity Centre, Herd Farm, Parks and Countryside, swimming and via the Hyde Park Picture House.
Highlights: Successes and challenges of the programme
The Healthy Holidays programme in Leeds during 2025 had great success but also challenges. The booking system mandated to verify eligibility for all children and young people accessing the programme was further embedded with most providers returning to deliver Healthy Holidays, some even praising the functionality of the system. The team worked tirelessly to promote the programme across the year and ensure that families registered on the system and were able to access events. By the end of September 2025, 9,931 children and young people were registered on the system and able to participate (in June 2026, this now stands at 11,435).
The breadth of activities was extensive, and many providers offered family trips, for example, visits to the coast and Lotherton Hall’s Christmas experience, bringing added value to the programme. We expanded the family offer through our partnership with the Hyde Park Picture House, offering a quality cinema and food experience for families which booked out almost immediately. Across the programme, much of the food on offer was of the highest quality, prepared and made on site, such as that cooked by the dedicated chef at Herd Farm. Nutritional education for both children and families was varied, with many making use of the previously published Healthy Eating Toolkits and delivered in ingenious ways by some partners. Signposting families to additional sources of support was critically important during 2025 given ongoing cost of living pressures, and the Community Hub provision continued to pioneer this work linking families to other council services, including digital support, NHS and third sector partners, many of whom operate out of the same hub building. These are just examples of the great work which took place under Healthy Holidays Leeds in 2025.
Although often hard to quantify, Healthy Holidays provision had clear impact resulting in positive change and learning:
The major issue with looking at any significant impact on any individuals of the Christmas Programme is the fact that the period we work with the children is so short. However, there was one Year 7 pupil whose attendance since September had been very poor and who was invited to the camp to hopefully have lasting effects into his school life. His family moved to the country in the summer of 2025, had significant financial issues and he had struggled to attend school at all. We didn't expect him to turn up but he came on the first day, really enjoyed himself and took some of the fruit and meals home. He then attended every single day and was mentored expertly by one of our staff with whom he forged a very strong relationship. He clearly thoroughly enjoyed the programme, made a number of friends and his family were very grateful for the food and support we were able to give them. Since school has gone back this term his attendance has drastically improved compared to last term.
The Christmas HAF programme is incredibly short and because of this it is very hard to pick out any one individual where significant benefit has been achieved. However, there are a brother and sister who started coming over the summer even though the boy was in Year 6 and who have now attended all of the summer provision and all of the Christmas provision. They come from a very deprived background where parents try as hard as possible but quite often the children are hungry and relatively unkempt in appearance. Along with the school we have offered the family as much support as possible in every way and the parents have been very grateful for this, as have the children. We made sure that whenever fruit was left over they were given the opportunity to take it home and we were in contact with the parents, as we are most parents, throughout the programme. It has been good to see them grow in confidence and we feel the programme has had direct benefit for them and their family.
Food offer
That chicken curry was banging.
Food provision throughout 2025 was of a high standard in general with all provision meeting children and young people’s dietary needs and cultural requirements. Catering Leeds provided food for some of the schools, all Community Hubs and much of the Breeze Youth Service provision.
Other providers commissioned local catering services but several also chose to focus heavily upon this element of their programme and involve children and young people in the preparation and cooking of meals from scratch.
Several clubs, including those specialising in SEND provision, incorporated restaurant experiences within their programmes offering participants the opportunity to ‘eat out’ which is likely to be beyond the reach of many families, especially given ongoing cost of living pressure.
Our central funding of cultural and surplus food hubs brought significant added value to the programme across Leeds, enabling providers to add snacks or breakfast to their offer, provide family hampers, and/or insert cookery and baking into their activities.
I've never eaten so much fruit in my life, I'm going to get mum to get some.
Enriching activity
Two brothers attended our Christmas pantomime trip and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They come from a large family and face challenges at home, including limited financial resources, which means opportunities like theatre visits are not usually accessible to them. Their younger brother also took part in our summer sessions, where all 3 children engaged positively and built confidence through group activities. The pantomime trip gave the brothers a chance to experience something special, festive, and memorable, helping them feel included and valued. Their enthusiasm and gratitude showed how much the opportunity meant to them, and the experience provided a positive break from their everyday circumstances.
In Leeds we were delighted with the breadth of activities on offer to our young people and are proud of the enriching activities offered through Healthy Holidays. We saw headteachers leading provision within schools offering ‘forest school’, waterslides and encouraging tasting of homegrown fruit and vegetables. Leeds City College undertook a programme targeting young people aged 15-16 aiming to familiarise them with the college environment at a less busy period than term time and demonstrating the breadth of opportunity offered under the umbrella of ‘digital skills’. Leeds City Council’s Community Hub provision continued the well-developed and comprehensive programme working with libraries. Active Leeds and commissioned arts and theatre groups and, within the third sector, we saw growing, picking and outdoor cooking sessions, as well as programmes with an emphasis on craft and dance. We are confident there was provision tailored for eligible children within Leeds and the range of activities available was too extensive to detail in full. However, we have included one provider’s activities over the summer as an example of how fantastic the schemes are:
Lazer quest; water zorbing; aeroball; assault courses; paintballing; mobile cave; inflatables; dancing; drumming workshop; gymnastics; athletics; dodgeball; crazy golf; team sports; cooking/baking: burgers, kebabs, soups, potatoes skins, houmous, fish fingers, dippers, cookies, buns, muffins, ice cream, master chef experience, nachos, pasta salad, bean salad; den building; pony party; botanical arts; woodland art/sculpting; beekeeper experience; planetarium; VR; festival; water fight; animation; RC cars; disco; Dogs Trust; treasure hunt; pirate for the day; sports day; junior stem; skateboarding; rain forest/jungle survival; Bollywood; classroom kitchen; art school; park and picnic, Seasonwell.
Physical activity
100% of our providers met the framework standard.
What a great morning, I can't remember running around that much.
In Leeds 100% of our providers met the Framework Standard of children and young people engaging in 60 minutes of physical activity during the Healthy Holidays session and 95% were assessed as either ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’ in this area. Again, the types of activities on offer were broad, ranging from traditional football and multi-sports-based camps to dance-based workshops and activity centre assault courses. We continued to encourage off-site trips as part of Healthy Holiday provision and this promoted participation in activities such as ice skating, roller blading and high ropes. We continued to invest in ‘Swimming Catch Up’ sessions for children and young people who may have missed out on lessons or who have otherwise low attainment in respect of this lifesaving skill. Providers worked hard to ensure sessions, especially in relation to physical activity, were accessible and tailored to the children and young people they were working with.
That dodgeball game was great, can we play again after lunch.
Nutritional education
The comprehensive Healthy Eating Toolkits remained available to providers along with information and games developed for the scheme. Providers often suggested they struggled with this element of the programme. However, year on year we see improvements evidenced through the Quality Assurance process. Nutrition and healthy lifestyle messages are invariably embedded within provision, especially the multi-sports-based clubs where hydration and healthy food were highlighted as critical to performance.
Signposting and referrals
The opportunity to signpost and refer families to further sources of support added value to the Healthy Holidays programme and included: Advice agencies; DWP; Employment and Skills; local council tax support and free school meals; Leeds School Uniform Exchange; Healthy Start and many more. Sessions also raised awareness of providers’ core term-time activities promoting participation for children and young people on an ongoing basis.
The Christmas Eve parcel ensured they had good-quality food and gifts, which the parent described as incredibly kind and generous, and made a significant difference to their Christmas Day. The activities also helped the family feel welcomed, supported and connected to the community, rather than facing the holiday period alone.
