FUNDING to provide a free serving of milk and healthy snack to all children attending pre-school nurseries in Scotland has been increased, following a judicial review of ScotGov's school milk scheme.

This news will mean hundreds of thousands of young children potentially benefitting from being able to enjoy drinking healthy milk at nursery.

The Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme was first launched in August 2021 with the aim of providing a free serving of milk and a healthy snack to all children attending pre-school settings in Scotland.

However, although the new scheme has worked well in many childcare settings, it has been a challenge in others, with concerns that its rules had, albeit unintentionally, left many nurseries and childminders out of pocket.

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As a result, the School and Nursery Milk Alliance brought a judicial review of those rules, which was heard at the Court of Session last month. The judge, Lord Braid, found in favour of the Alliance, concluding that the government did not undertake a proper consultation on a key aspect of the new scheme, namely the actual funding per child per day, and also that the way that the funding rates were decided was irrational.

In response to this ruling, ScotGov this week increased the available funding for nursery milk.

Chairman of the School and Nursery Milk Alliance, Jon Thornes, said: “We commend the Scottish Government for taking action to make their great scheme even better. The improved scheme will be more inclusive –we hope that more settings will now register for the scheme in full confidence that they will receive sufficient funding to enable them to provide milk and a healthy snack to their children.

“The changes will also benefit those settings that are already registered but were finding that the funding they received was not enough to cover the full cost of providing the milk to their children – the increased funding will really help them," said Mr Thornes. "We look forward to continuing to work with the Scottish Government as they strive to develop a permanent solution that will ensure that all pre-school children in Scotland can enjoy a free daily serving of milk.”