More than half a million children will go hungry during the school holidays from the autumn half term if the Government fails to renew the £1 billion local welfare crisis fund, which runs out in six weeks, charities have warned.

Last year, English local authorities spent £370 million of their Household Support Fund (HSF) on holiday meal vouchers that enable pupils to access free school meals (FSM), but more than a quarter of local authorities say this support could disappear if the fund is abolished.

Stopping the HSF could also destroy the already fragile social safety net that supports tens of thousands of families at risk of poverty with cash, food parcels, fuel vouchers, clothing, beds, cookers and other essential goods.

“If HSF ends and there is no long-term strategy to replace it, it will immediately plunge millions of people into even greater financial hardship. The effects of poverty, deprivation and even malnutrition will be exacerbated and the additional costs to public services will be enormous,” concludes a report by the charity End Furniture Poverty.

The report, which relies almost 100% on information from the local authority Freedom of Information Register, shows that England’s local social safety net for crisis support, which has existed in various forms since the 1930s, is fragmented and in many areas non-existent.

In almost a third of English local authorities, with a population of 18 million people, local crisis support would disappear, including Birmingham, Bradford, Nottingham, Westminster, Croydon, Hampshire, Slough and Stoke-on-Trent.

Their closure would also push numerous local food banks to the brink of insolvency, as many of them now rely on cash grants from the HSF to meet the explosion in demand for charity food as a result of Covid and the cost of living crisis.

The government, which last week set out the terms of reference for its long-term plan to “reduce and alleviate child poverty”, is under pressure to decide urgently on the future of the HSF. Funding for the programme runs out on 30 September, a month before the Autumn Statement.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves last month described the £500m HSF budget for the first six months of this year as one of numerous “unfunded” commitments from the previous government – part of a £22bn spending deficit – that are now facing close scrutiny by the Treasury.

Campaigners expect ministers to be wary of provoking a public backlash if school holiday meal vouchers are scrapped in many areas of England. A popular campaign by footballer Marcus Rashford twice forced then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson to backtrack on plans to scrap support for free school meals during the holidays in 2020.

The End Furniture Poverty report shows the extent to which local authorities have relied on the HSF to tackle hunger during the holidays over the past three years. Last year, 44% of the total budget was used to fund food vouchers during the holidays, the largest single item of expenditure.

Twenty-two municipalities have said they would abolish the vouchers if the HSF is not renewed, and another 20 have said they are undecided. The report estimates that 561,000 children currently eligible for FSM vouchers would no longer have access to them if the fund were abolished.

“The alternative to providing (holiday) vouchers is for children to go hungry until the welfare state is able to adequately meet needs,” the report says. “This will reduce the educational opportunities of the poorest children and undermine their ability to reach their potential.”

The HSF was introduced by the last government in autumn 2021 to mitigate the impact of its decision to reverse the pandemic-related £20 increase in Universal Credit. The last government renewed the fund at the last minute in March, but only provided six months’ worth of funding.

Last year, in addition to the meal vouchers for the school holidays funded by the HSF, the families also received More than 1.2 million households in England received other forms of HSF support and thousands more benefited from local charitable services partly funded by HSF grants, such as food banks, advice centres and winter ‘warm room’ projects.

The Local Government Association said last week that 60 percent of English local authorities would be unable to provide additional funding for local social care crisis programmes if the HSF were to be withdrawn, despite a surge in demand expected in the coming months due to high fuel and food prices.

According to End Furniture Poverty, the English local welfare system is significantly less generous than the Welsh and Scottish government programmes in times of crisis. Local welfare spending per head in England was £1.37 in 2023-24, compared to £10.47 in Wales and £9.16 in Scotland.

Campaigners are pushing for the HSF to be retained for at least six months. Claire Donovan, head of policy at End Furniture Poverty, said: “We know the HSF is only a stopgap measure, but we urgently need a final extension of funding while an urgent review of local authority crisis support is carried out.”

A government spokesman said: “This government will tackle the scar of poverty by making work pay and improving supports to help people get into good jobs. Further details of the Household Support Fund will be announced in due course.”