Woking MP Will Forster has demanded Surrey County Council reconsider its decision to end the free school meal holiday voucher scheme, warning that vulnerable children could lose an important safety net. Mr Forster raised the issue in Parliament on the 10th of March, warning the government of the risk it puts struggling families and their children in. He has also put forward a motion in Parliament calling on Surrey County Council to urgently reconsider the decision to end free school meal vouchers.

The scheme, which provides supermarket vouchers to families whose children receive free school meals during school holidays, has supported families across Surrey during periods when children are not in school.

Mr Forster said schools play a vital role not only in education but also in ensuring children’s wellbeing, including making sure they are receiving regular meals. The motion in Parliament is an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling on Surrey County Council to urgently reconsider the decision as it will deprive children of a healthy meal. 

Speaking about the decision, Will Forster MP said:

“Schools are one of the most important places where we can make sure children are safe, supported and getting the nutrition they need.

“For many families, free school meals provide the reassurance that their child will eat at least one proper meal a day. During school holidays, the voucher scheme has helped bridge that gap.

“Ending this support risks leaving some of the most vulnerable children without that safety net.”

Mr Forster also highlighted the wider safeguarding role schools play in supporting children and families.

“Schools are often the first place where concerns about a child’s wellbeing are noticed. Ensuring children remain supported outside term time is an important part of protecting their welfare.

“I urge Surrey County Council to reconsider this decision and work with schools and local communities to ensure no child goes hungry during the holidays.”

Mr Forster said he will continue to raise the issue with Surrey County Council and push for continued support for families and children who rely on free school meals.

Will Forster, Liberal Democrat MP for Woking, has called for urgent government support for Woking High School and asked Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions to visit the school to inspect the crumbling classrooms himself.

 

Mr Forster, who previously attended Woking High School, recently visited the school met with staff, students and the school council before being shown around several of the site’s ageing buildings.

 

Many of the classrooms, built in the 1960s, remain in use today despite significant deterioration. School leaders explained that the school has repeatedly been unsuccessful in securing funding through the government’s Condition Improvement Fund (CIF), leaving them without the resources needed to repair or replace the buildings.

 

The school’s operational team also showed Mr Forster damaged classrooms where temporary fixes are being used to keep facilities operational. Staff said the buildings become extremely hot in summer and freezing in winter, with some wall panels deteriorating to the point where holes expose the outside elements, contributing to damp and mould. The visit also included a condemned building taken out of use last year after the roof partially collapsed and the floor began to rot.

Raising the issue in the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s questions, Mr Forster said:

“Last month I visited my old secondary school; Woking High. I saw classrooms built in the 1960s — they were only meant to last 20 years, yet they are still in use and being held together by gaffa tape.

I walked into my old music classroom; it had a huge hole in the roof and I nearly fell through the rotting floor. It was condemned last year, but I can still remember the stench of mould.

Mr Speaker, will the Prime Minister agree to come to Woking High School with me to see how bad it is, and ensure that my old school urgently gets the funding it needs so my young constituents can learn in a school fit for the 21st century?”

Prime Minister’s response:

The Prime Minister declined the invitation to come to Woking, however did assure that Mr Forster can have a meeting with the Minister for Education about Woking High School’s crumbling classrooms in the near future. 

Following the visit last month, Mr Forster said he would continue to press the government to secure funding so that pupils in Woking can learn in safe, modern facilities.

Local authority children’s services across the country are in crisis. Nowhere is that clearer than in my Woking constituency.  

In the early hours of 10th August 2023, Woking resident Sara Sharif was found murdered. She had a traumatic head injury, human bite marks and multiple broken bones. She had been burned by a domestic iron. Next to Sara’s body, the police found plastic bags, packing tape and a cricket bat, all with Sara’s blood on them. 

The people who did that to Sara deserve a special place in hell, but unfortunately Sara’s death was not a one-off tragedy; it was the most extreme and horrific consequence of children’s services being hollowed out, fragmented and weakened over the years. 

The day before Sara was murdered, Surrey’s County Council Children’s Services turned up at the wrong house due to an “administrative error”. Unfortunately, such errors are the inevitable consequence of years of decay caused by the underfunding and whittling down of children’s services, not just in Surrey but across the country. 

It is shameful that we have allowed ourselves to reach a point where the most vulnerable people in our society are being so gravely failed by a system designed to protect them. 

Surrey is supposed to be one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet this is what our children’s services look like. What scares me most is that our county council’s children’s services were rated “Good” by Ofsted in March 2025, a decision that frankly I, many fellow MPs, constituents and people across Surrey find bonkers.  

Based on what I know about Surrey, this “Good” rating is a thin veneer that barely covers up the rot within. If that is “Good”, what on earth is happening in the rest of the country? 

It's appalling that this Government’s recent spending review agreed a real-terms cut in the grant to local authorities for children’s services. We should not be cutting that funding; we should not be putting a price on a child’s life.   

In the Westminster Hall debate I held about children’s services in local authorities on Wednesday 29^th January 2026, we heard of massive discrepancies in the funding for children’s services across the country.  

York for example spends £35 million – and its children’s services are rated outstanding – but just down the road, Bradford (albeit slightly larger) spends £262 million, and its children’s services are rated as inadequate. 

This points to the complexity of the issue – just spending more money doesn’t necessarily deliver improved services. The challenges faced by different local authorities vary wildly and the Government needs to recognise that in different parts of the country, there are different funding challenges. 

As my Lib Dem colleague Gideon Amos MP pointed out, in his rural Taunton and Wellington constituency, the Government’s removal of the funding uplift for the most remote authorities “will have an effect on children’s services, as it will on SEND provision and a whole range of council services.”  

Gideon gave the example of Somerset, where it is 53% more expensive to provide home-to-school transport than in an average authority. It will clearly be easier and cheaper to travel around a suburban-urban are like mine than rural Somerset, but despite this their funding uplift has been removed. 

This speaks to the crux of the issue; there is no one size fix all solution to solving the crisis in our children’s services.  

From April of next year, my area will have a new local authority: West Surrey Council. Surrey County Council is set to be abolished, and I am pleased that it is. But in Surrey, and across the country, we cannot simply wait for local government reorganisation. Children’s lives are at risk now.  

I want Sara’s legacy to be one that she is the last child to be abused, tortured and murdered by those that should have loved and protected her. For that to happen, we need a pragmatic approach, with better joined-up public services where information is shared quickly and effectively to prevent children from being put at risk.  

We need to ensure that local authorities are well equipped to deal with the upcoming changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, so that no more children fall through the cracks.  

I want Ministers to intervene in failing local authorities, putting them into special measures where necessary, to protect vulnerable children, like Sara, in Surrey and across the country. 

Woking MP Will Forster has responded to the publication of the long-awaited Child Safeguarding Practice Review into the tragic murder of ten-year-old Sara Sharif. 

Mr Forster, who first called for the review a year ago, said the findings confirmed his worst fears – that the state, and Surrey County Council in particular, failed Sara at every stage. 

The report exposes that, “There were numerous times before Sara was born and throughout her life, that the seriousness and significance of Father as a serial perpetrator of domestic abuse was overlooked, not acted on and underestimated by almost all professionals who became involved with Sara and her family.” 

Mr Forster said: 

“All the warning signs were there, yet they were not acted upon.” 

“The authorities were fully aware that Sara was at risk. She was placed on a child protection plan before she was even born and was a victim of domestic abuse from that day onwards.” 

The review also finds that Sara’s murderers were able to exploit loopholes in the home education system to hide their abuse, stating, “There can now be no doubt that Sara’s Father and Stepmother used home education to keep Sara hidden from view in the last weeks of her life.” 

Mr Forster believes this gap in the law must now be urgently closed: 

“It is now painfully clear that Sara’s killers used weaknesses in the home education system to conceal what was happening. Legislation is urgently needed to ensure this can never happen again.” 

The report makes clear that even in the year of Sara’s death, “In March 2023, SCC Children’s services, where referrals are received, did not identify that Sara was at risk of being abused by her father, stepmother and uncle. Expected robust safeguarding processes were not followed.” 

Mr Forster has called for Surrey County Council’s Children’s Services to be placed into special measures immediately and demanded accountability from senior council officers: 

“Given the gravity of this report, the Executive Director for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning at Surrey County Council, Rachael Wardell, should appear before MPs to explain why she accepted an £8,700 pay rise after Sara’s death — despite the catastrophic failings of her department.” 

He concluded by urging both the Government and Surrey County Council to act immediately on the report’s findings. 

“There must now be a fundamental cultural shift within Surrey County Council to ensure its own rules are enforced and that no other child slips through the cracks of a system designed to protect them. 

“It is vital that the 15 comprehensive recommendations set out in the report are urgently implemented in full. 

We owe it to Sara, and to every vulnerable child in Surrey and beyond, to ensure that no child is ever again murdered by those who should love and care for them.” 

The prisoner released is a Woking resident whose offences have predominantly taken place within Woking. 

Will Forster, the Liberal Democrat MP for Woking, has slammed the mistaken release of a second prisoner from HMP Wandsworth, describing the situation as “utterly unacceptable” and “distressing for Woking residents that a prisoner wrongfully released might have returned to our town.”  

This is the third such error in less than two weeks, following the mistaken release of an Algerian man from the same prison on 29 October, and another prisoner who was wrongly released from HMP Chelmsford just five days earlier on 24 October. 

Mr Forster said: 

“It’s utterly unacceptable that this person was wrongly released, especially on top of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s mistaken release from the same prison last week. 

“I have been informed that the police are actively working to apprehend this person as soon as possible, and they have reassured me that there is no indication of risk to the wider public. 

“I understand that this is distressing for Woking residents that a prisoner wrongfully released might have returned to our town. 

“I urge any residents with any information to contact police immediately via 101 or 999 if necessary. 

“This is yet another grave mistake from the Government. The public deserves a full explanation about how this has happened again. Both the Government and the Prison Service must own up to their failures and guarantee that these mistakes will stop happening once and for all.” 

Mr Forster is continuing to press the Government and the Prison Service for answers and assurances that robust measures are being taken to prevent any further wrongful releases. 

The prisoner released is a Woking resident whose offences have predominantly taken place within Woking. 

Will Forster, the Liberal Democrat MP for Woking, has slammed the mistaken release of a second prisoner from HMP Wandsworth, describing the situation as “utterly unacceptable” and “distressing for Woking residents that a prisoner wrongfully released might have returned to our town.”  

This is the third such error in less than two weeks, following the mistaken release of an Algerian man from the same prison on 29 October, and another prisoner who was wrongly released from HMP Chelmsford just five days earlier on 24 October. 

Mr Forster said: 

“It’s utterly unacceptable that this person was wrongly released, especially on top of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif’s mistaken release from the same prison last week. 

“I have been informed that the police are actively working to apprehend this person as soon as possible, and they have reassured me that there is no indication of risk to the wider public. 

“I understand that this is distressing for Woking residents that a prisoner wrongfully released might have returned to our town. 

“I urge any residents with any information to contact police immediately via 101 or 999 if necessary. 

“This is yet another grave mistake from the Government. The public deserves a full explanation about how this has happened again. Both the Government and the Prison Service must own up to their failures and guarantee that these mistakes will stop happening once and for all.”