Leicester's free school uniform pop-up shop to return in 2026

BBC News

a day ago

More than 1,500 children in Leicester have received free school uniform items from a charity pop-up shop, organisers say.LCH Charity set up the shop at the Highcross shopping centre using £50,000 in anti-poverty funding from the city council.The idea was to offer pre-worn school clothing of all types to lower-income families.The city council has now confirmed it will support the project for a second year in 2026.
Originally known as Leicester Children's Holidays, LCH Charity now offers several projects to help disadvantaged children in the East Midlands. Since 7 July, the pop-up uniform shop has been stocked with thousands of pre-worn items donated by parents at 50 of the charity's partnered schools. The store has now closed, but staff are still working to ship online orders to families who could not attend in person. The rest of the stock will be stored away and used to help families next year.
Paula Richardson, provision support assistant at the charity, said there were some parents who said they could not afford a polo top "which is sometimes £3"."It just shows that it's really hard nowadays to buy uniform. It's a real struggle," she said."We do so much for children that are underprivileged and aren't able to go on holidays or don't get to go out to the cinema."I just think if that was me in that situation I'd want something like this to help my children."
"Every child on average has received 10 items of uniform or PE kit and we have supported in the shop about 1,500 children," said LCH's chief executive Nichola Moore. "That's 15,000 items of uniform that has gone out of the shop over the last three weeks, which is a huge amount."Ms Moore said there was more schools could do to bring down the cost of uniform, such as allowing more "generic" non-branded items."If you've got a bigger family - two, three, four children - the costs run into the hundreds and hundreds of pounds, families just haven't got that money," she said.
Hozan, 40, said the pop-up shop had made her and her son Younis "very, very happy"."If you buy PE clothes, or shoes or a bag and blazer, everything is very expensive," she said.Another parent said the store was "very beneficial when you're on a low income" and volunteers were doing "very important" work. LCH chief executive Nichola Moore said Leicester City Council had agreed to fund the pop up shop for another year "because the demand has been so high".