Suffolk County Council has recently carried out a review of the Household Support Fund Discretionary Grant voucher scheme, and we would like to give you early notice that the contract has been awarded to a new provider. Edenred (UK Group) Ltd will no longer be responsible for the distribution of vouchers, and instead, these will be issued by our new provider, Sodexo Motivations Solutions UK Ltd.

The transfer to Sodexo will be implemented for the summer holiday issue of vouchers and will continue until the grant funding ends.

Within this due diligence process, SCC has, additionally, made the decision to alter the ordering process of vouchers to reduce the administrative burden on schools. The grant will still be provided from the Household Support funding the Council has received from the government; however, this will be issued to eligible families by the SCC Free School Meals team rather than by schools.

Going forward, the Free School Meals team will ask each school to provide us with a parent/carer’s email address for each of your eligible students prior to the start of the school holiday, so that we can order the vouchers on behalf of the school. The vouchers will then be issued directly to the family.

The aim, through changing the current process for voucher orders, is to streamline the issuing of vouchers, decrease the workload for schools and allow any parent/carer queries to be directed to SCC, particularly during the school holidays when schools are closed.

A letter for parents/carers will be sent from the Free School Meals team to each school and we kindly ask that you forward this to your eligible families to make them aware of the change in provider. The process for families to redeem their e-vouchers will remain the same, however, they will be issued directly from Sodexo, rather than Edenred, and redeemed via a different redemption website. Instructions on how to redeem them will be provided within the initial email from Sodexo to the recipients. Vouchers for all major supermarkets will still be available.

For those schools whose main supermarket in the area is the Co-op, there will be no change to the ordering process. You can continue to order your vouchers directly and we will reimburse you the cost of purchasing. 

If you have any questions regarding the new process or change in provider, please contact the Free School Meals Team at [email protected]. We thank you for your continued support in helping us to distribute the Household Support Fund.