Clothing grants and free school meals

Free school meals

If you are in receipt of Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction from South Lanarkshire Council and you have a child who attends a school in South Lanarkshire, there is no need for you to apply online. We will use the information we hold to automatically award free school meals and/or school clothing grants to eligible families.

If you have a child who attends a South Lanarkshire school they are entitled to free school meals if you receive any of the following benefits:

Income Support
Universal Credit (and your earned income is less than £796 as assessed by the Department for Work and Pensions in the assessment period immediately preceding the application for free school meals)
Job Seekers Allowance (income based)
Employment and Support Allowance (income related)
Child Tax Credit only (with a gross annual income less than £19,995 as assessed by HM Revenues and Customs on your Tax Credit Award Notice TC602)
Working Tax Credit and Child Tax credit (with a gross annual income less than £9,552) as assessed by HM Revenues and Customs on your Tax Credit Award Notice (TC602)
Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999

To check the eligibility criteria for clothing grants, please see the Eligibility section on our Clothing grant page.

Free school meals could save you approximately £376 per academic year. Entitlement can be checked at schools from the beginning of term.

If you are in receipt of Housing Benefit and/or *Council Tax Reduction from South Lanarkshire Council and you have a child who attends a school in South Lanarkshire, do not complete our online application. We will use the information we hold to automatically award free school meals to eligible families.

*Single person discount on your Council Tax is not classed as Council Tax Reduction. If you are receiving single person discount on your Council Tax, you should still apply for a clothing grant/free school meals. Universal Credit recipients should only apply online if they are not receiving Council Tax Reduction.

Evidence

The following will be required with your online application (if relevant):

Tax Credits - all pages of your current award notice (TC602) for this year showing the following:
- Name and address
- Household income
- Any children's details
- Working Tax/Child Tax Credit award details
Universal Credit - screenshots of all sections of your most recent online Payment Statement showing the following:
- Name and address
- Amount being paid and date of assessment period
- All entitlement and deduction figures
Housing Benefit/Council Tax Reduction - your most recent award letter (not applicable if you live in South Lanarkshire)

If you do not provide all the required pages of your Tax Credits award notice or Universal Credit statement, this could cause a delay in your application being processed.

Please note: in some circumstances, you may be asked to provide proof of child benefit as noted below -

Child Benefit award letter or Bank statement showing your name, address and Child Benefit payment details

Please have your evidence (where applicable) ready to upload before you begin.

Apply for a clothing grant/free school meals

You will be asked to upload evidence on the application form. We can accept jpegs and pdf files but we advise pdfs as the file size is smaller.

Please don’t take photos of your PC screen or phone screen as these can be blurry. If you need to do this you should use the screenshot/print screen function on your PC or phone.

When you take a photo of a document such as a bank statement sometimes the file sizes are too big, especially if you have to upload a lot of different images to your form. This can cause the form to fail and we advise converting jpegs to pdfs. You can do this in the following ways.

On an Android phone

select image you want
from the menu select print image
select Save as pdf
choose where to save it
save

On an iPhone

select the image you want
tap the sharing button and select Print
at the Printer options screen, use a spreading gesture with your fingers on the image preview to show Save as pdf
select Share the converted photo as PDF and choose where to save it

On a PC

right click on the icon of the image
select Convert to Adobe pdf
click on the Save file icon in the top left hand corner
select where to save it
name it
save

If you have been asked to provide evidence to support an application that you have already made for a clothing grant or free school meals, you can submit this using our online form.

Submit evidence

If you have received a letter advising you to provide your bank details for your free school meals (FSM) holiday payment (or clothing grant payment), please click on the BACS details (FSM holiday payments) button below to provide this information.

BACS details (FSM holiday payment)

If you are in receipt of certain benefits, you and your family may qualify for a leisure concession card giving you up to 50% off the cost of swimming, fitness classes, children's activities and other activities with South Lanarkshire Leisure. Full details can be found on the South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture website.