Bolton is stepping up support for young people to access good quality food over the summer holidays.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) in collaboration with Forever Manchester will be providing a further 900 emergency food cards for children and young people.

This comes after Bolton and the nine other Greater Manchester authorities identified a £5m funding gap in food provision for children and young people over the break, despite an extension to the government's Covid Local Support Grant and provision of holiday activities and food programme funding.

Each card will be charged with £5 credit for those young people in need to access vital food over the summer and can be used in a range of supermarkets.

The ‘No Child Should Go Hungry’ initiative was first launched last October and provided over 4,365 cards to young people in need.

Metro Mayor Andy Burnham and the GMCA will work closely with partners in each area, such as voluntary and charity organisations, Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership and businesses to make sure there is a collaborative approach to tackling holiday hunger.

Mr Burnham said: “While I welcome the extension of the support grant by the Government, what I am hearing from councils in Greater Manchester is more needs to be done to help young people at risk of going hungry over the summer holidays.

“We are stepping up additional support by providing 900 emergency food vouchers across the city region and setting up a platform for residents to donate to help tackle holiday hunger.

“I would like to thank all the organisations that have worked with us to support our No Child Should Go Hungry campaign.

“We worked closely with the Co-op when we launched the vouchers last October and have been working with partners such as Forever Manchester to be able to set with up additional support for this summer and the future.

“By building on what we have learnt from reducing homelessness and rough sleeping we want to build a strong, cross-society No Child Should Go Hungry campaign to tackle food poverty and holiday hunger as a long-term issue.”