PRIMARY schools across Torbay will get a windfall of nearly £300,000 thanks to a ‘trailblazing’ change in the way Torbay Council allocates free school meals.

The switch to ‘auto-enrolment’ will mean more than a quarter of the bay’s children will qualify for free meals. Under the system, the council uses welfare data to identify eligible children and automatically registers them, allowing them to opt-out if they don’t want free meals for any reason.

It aims to increase the uptake of free school meals, and many eligible parents have not applied for them in the past.

Torbay is among a small number of councils leading the way on the new system, and there are calls to establish a central, national process.

Cllr Nick Bye (Con, Wellswood) told a full council meeting he was ‘delighted’ that an extra 235 pupils in the bay now qualified for free school meals.

The increased figure would bring a ‘pupil premium’ in the budget given to schools of £200,000 for the bay’s primary schools and £87,000 for its secondaries.

Nationally, it is estimated that 470,000 children living in the most deprived households are missing out on their statutory right to a free hot meal despite meeting the government’s criteria to qualify. The government believes more than one in 10 families who would be eligible do not apply.

Cllr Bye told the meeting: “We believe that we are the only authority outside London at this stage to be introducing automatic enrolment. We are there in the vanguard. We are a trailblazer, and other local authorities are looking at Torbay.”

And, he said, it meant 27 per cent of Torbay’s children were now entitled to receive free school meals.