Retail deals and discounts to help families over the summer holidays have been announced as part of the government’s Help for Households Campaign.
Signed with some of the UK’s biggest businesses, including Asda, Morrisons, Amazon and Vodafone, these deals are designed to reduce costs at the checkout, help provide entertainment and ensure access to necessary services for families during the summer holidays and beyond.
Agreed with the government’s Cost of Living Business Tsar David Buttress, the deals include the extension of Asda’s ‘Kids eat for £1’ scheme, where children aged 16 and under can access a hot or cold meal for £1 at any time of day in Asda Cafes across the UK.
Sainsbury’s is introducing it’s ‘feed your family for a fiver’ campaign, helping customers with budget-friendly meal ideas to feed a family of four for less than £5.
Theatres in London are uniting for Kids Week, an initiative giving children the chance to see a West End show for free throughout August with a full paying adult, with half price tickets for two additional children in the same group, while Vodafone is promoting a mobile social tariff of £10 a month.
Along with new initiatives, some deals are a continuation of successful support schemes which businesses are already running and want to promote under the Help for Households campaign to raise awareness.
These include Amazon’s new ‘help for households’ page that will provide access to free entertainment such as Freevee and Amazon Music, as well as educational resources for school-aged children and low-price essential groceries. Morrisons is also providing a free meal for every child at in-store cafes when a parent buys an adult meal.
These deals form the first part of the Help for Household retail campaign which will aim to provide deals for families over four distinct periods –the summer holidays, back to school, Autumn pressures and Christmas retail – with deals secured and hosted on the government’s new Help for Households website so that people can find them easily in one place.
To mark the launch of the bespoke cost of living deals, the Prime Minister and David Buttress will host a meeting of senior business leaders involved in the campaign in No10 tomorrow [Thursday] to thank the businesses involved and discuss new ideas for cutting the cost of living.
Attendees are likely to include representatives from Sainsburys, Vodafone, Amazon, Centrica and the CBI.
Cost of Living Business Tsar David Buttress will also thank businesses for their support and praise the campaign’s “good start” while making clear that “we’ve got more to do and more deals to announce - not just over the summer holidays but when kids return to school and in the run up to Christmas when costs are typically higher”.
These deals build on the £37bn package of Help for Households already being provided by government – including tax cuts and help towards energy, childcare and transport costs.
The government’s online cost of living support pages, which have been visited over 2.2 million times, are helping the public to access the panoply of different cost of living support schemes available across government. 90% of users have said that they find the site helpful.
