Dear Parents/Carers 

 

For those who are eligible for Free School Meal Vouchers, we have received the following message from Northamptonshire County Council in relation to downloading your vouchers;

 

Your school may have recently been contacted by parents stating they are unable to claim their Xmas Holiday food voucher that you have kindly distributed on behalf of Northamptonshire County Council.

 

This issue is being caused by the unprecedented demand for supermarket vouchers that has arisen from the government distribution of the Winter Covid Grant to all Local Authorities for use for this purpose. Essentially, the companies that purchase and distribute these vouchers to our online distribution partner, Huggg, can not get vouchers to Huggg for distribution to individual families quickly enough.

 

Should you receive any enquiries from parents, please advise them as follows;

• Their voucher is completely safe and secure and they will be able to access it in the near future;
• If a parent has attempted to access a voucher for a specific supermarket and it has failed to work, they should wait for between 1-2 hours and try again;
• If possible, parents should avoid trying to claim the voucher between 1-4pm as  this appears to be the peak time for doing so and the most likely timeframe they will encounter issues;
• Clicking on the voucher link multiple times in quick succession is serving to heighten demand on the system and will lead to longer delays.

 

Thank you for you continued co-operation and assistance in this matter.

 

Yours Faithfully

 

Northamptonshire County Council