How to get £442 worth of free food for kids at Lidl

Lidl is giving families £442 worth of free food for kids who use Healthy Start vouchers in store.

Lidl is giving families the chance to get £442 worth of free food for kids when they shop in store using their Healthy Start vouchers.

The state-backed coupon scheme gives parents on low-income the chance to get money off food for their children.

The vouchers are currently worth £3.10 each and the government plans to increase this to £4.25 from April 2021. But in the meantime, Lidl is promising to top up the vouchers by £1.15 until the end of March to plug the gap.

And if you're wondering how this will impact you, it means parents and pregnant women can get £4.25 worth of food for each £3.10 voucher spent in Lidl stores - for an extra 13 weeks in the year.

Those who qualify for the Healthy Start scheme get one or two vouchers per week, per child, depending on how old the child is.

To work out the advantage of shopping at Lidl with your vouchers is easy - for instance if you have a child that's younger than 12-months old you are entitled to two vouchers each week.

Using the government scheme this is 26 vouchers at £3.10 each from January to March and a further 39 vouchers worth £4.25 from April to December - a total of £412.10 free food.

But savvy shoppers who spend their vouchers at Lidl will get a extra £29.90 per child of this age - boosting the free food total to £442.

For a family who has three children between the ages of one and four, you'd get an extra £44.85 - which equates to £14.95 extra per child.

So if you want to boost your food shop, simply shop at Lidl between now and the end of March to get the bonus amount to spend. And in April the vouchers can be spent anywhere so you can choose a supermarket most convenient for you.