THE city council has agreed to fund free meal vouchers during school holidays as part of plans to help with the cost-of-living crisis.

Worcester City Council has made a move to put forward up to £107,500 to support any proposals to help children struggling to eat during school holidays for at least the next six months.

The council said it will step in to help pay for food if no other schemes come forward between now and March next year.

Paying for free school meal vouchers during holidays has so far been the responsibility of Worcestershire County Council.

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Cllr Pat Agar said the council needed to make sure the city’s children were fed but it should be down to the county council to come up with the money.

“I do think that urgency is very much needed here,” she said at a meeting in the Guildhall on September 8.

“We are facing a very serious issue here of massive inflation and a whole tsunami of economic and financial woes across the city I would suspect and making sure the city’s children are fed must be a priority.

“It’s difficult to explain how crucial and how awful Christmas will be for a great number of families in this city as they struggle to heat their homes and feed their families.

“We can’t sit here and do nothing.”

READ MORE: Worcester families to be provided with free meal vouchers during summer holidays

The council’s policy and resources committee also backed plans to hand over £20,000 to Citizens Advice Worcester to train more staff and volunteers.

The city council’s managing director David Blake said the county council had received government guidance on the next round of hardship money - of which the county received just under £4 million in support to cover the last six months – and was expecting to receive a ‘similar’ amount again.

The county council agreed to fund vouchers for only the first two weeks of the latest summer school holiday – because of government changes to how the funding could be distributed – leading to the city council stepping in at the last minute to agree to fund the remaining four weeks of the break.

If the restrictions on how the money can be distributed are lifted, then it is expected the county council could cover the cost of the meal vouchers.