Children and Families Minister Vicky Ford joined Huw Merriman, MP for Bexhill, on visits to two government-funded summer holiday activity programmes helping disadvantaged young people in Sidley, Bexhill.

The Sidley Summer of Fun activities programme caters for children from 5 to 16 years old over three site.

The Minister first visited All Saints School in Sidley where 5 to 7 year olds were taking part in a story-telling activity with children's author, Ed Boxall. 

Both Huw and Vicky joined in the activities and chatted to the children about what they enjoyed about the summer activity programme. They then went onto Freedom Church in Sidley to join 11-16 year olds taking part in creative activities with local artists and makers from the De La Warr Pavilion as well as learning about computer coding. The MPs stayed to enjoy a healthy lunch with the young people which was provided by local charity Hands of Hope.

East Sussex County Council was awarded £1.6 million of government funding to run the Holiday Activity and Food Programme and the Bexhill initiative is part of 55 such projects county wide.

The aims of the programme are: support childcare during the summer holidays so parents can continue working; build and level up skills, new experiences, new relationships for disadvantaged children; and, tackle the attainment gap in education outcomes as well as providing food.