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What are Holiday Hubs?

Holiday Hubs are for children and young people who cannot access any other form of mainstream activities during school holidays due to the nature or complexity of their disability or support needs. â¶Ä¯&²Ô²ú²õ±è;

Each holiday hub is run by an activity provider who is contracted by City of Â鶹ӳ»­ to deliver this work.  

Each year there is a new annual intake and the Holiday Hubs run in the same cycle as the academic year.  

Application dates are advertised on this page each year. 

Holiday Hubs run Monday - Thursday from 9am to 3pm during October, February, Easter and Summer holidays.  

2026 / 27 Holiday Hubs support provision

Applications for the 2026 /27 holiday hubs provision has now closed. Unfortunately we cannot accept any new applications at this point.  

We are now in the process of distributing all 2026-27 holiday hub full year allocation letters to all parents/carers.

When you receive your full allocation letter we require you to confirm to us that you are happy to accept the offered allocation. 

We have had an influx of emails requesting week changes. We try to accomodate as many requests as we can but please note that we are unable to confirm any changes until after each payment deadline passes. All 2026-27 payment deadlines are listed below. 

Please consult our Holiday Hubs FAQs document if you have any queries about this provision. 

If you have any questions about holiday hub support please email holidaysupport@edinburgh.gov.uk 

2026-27 payment deadlines 

If we do not recieve payment of any communication from you to confirm your space before the payment deadline listed below, your space will be re-allocated. If any parents/carers have any issues or questions regarding payment of spaces, please contact us prior to the deadline by emailing holidaysupport@edinburgh.gov.uk 

October holiday payment deadline – Monday 21 September 2026

February holiday payment deadline – Monday 23 November 2026

Easter holiday payment deadline – Monday 25 January 2027

Summer holiday payment deadline – Monday 26 April 2027

Eligibility for holiday support

• Children and young people who reside in the City of Edinburgh and for whom they hold duty of education and care.  
• Children and young people with a disability and as a result cannot access universal provision. 

Eligible applications will be considered against the following criteria 

• Child’s plan indicates the child or young person requires highly specialised curriculum and resources not ordinarily available in a mainstream classroom deployed/designed for the child or young person’s specific use on a continuous basis 
• Child’s plan indicates that the child or young person can easily become significantly overwhelmed and dysregulated and thus requires an environment of space and reduced sensory stimulation including individual or small group sessions.  
• Child plan that indicates planning for the child or young person is highly individualised. Planning will involve highly individualised, structured activities requiring frequent review and ongoing consultation with external agencies.  
• Child’s plan indicates that the child or young person requires a high level of adult support and supervision continuously as a result of health and safety issues arising from primary care needs.  
• In receipt of support from the Children Affected by Disability team and recommended by their social worker as requiring holiday support within their assessment of need. 
• Recommendation from senior education staff or child disability team recommending holiday support linked to their professional judgment and assessment of imminent risk of family breakdown.
• In receipt of child disability payment mid level care and above. 

Full information about our privacy, data and information sharing policies can be found on our website: Privacy and data protection 

Holiday Hubs FAQs 

Criteria 

A new holiday hubs criteria was first designed and agreed at committee in 2025. This has been refined and updated for 2026 - 27 working in collaboration with the Holiday Hubs Parent and Carer Steering Group.  

We have a fixed limited number of contracted spaces available within this non statutory provision. Unfortunately, there is not capacity to realistically provide support to everybody who needs it.   

Adaptations and updates to the holiday hubs criteria, taken both so far and in future, are reflective of our efforts to continue working in collaboration with the holiday hubs parent or carer steering group to ensure this provision is allocated as fairly and transparently as possible to children and young people who need it the most.  

Applications

We do not maintain any parental distribution or mailing list therefore we do not send individual notifications or emails out to parents/carers on the subject of applications. 

Application opening/closing dates will be displayed on this page each year, once confirmed, and a link to the application form will be available on this page whilst applications are open. 

We consult with the Holiday Hub Parent/Carer Steering Group in a bid to make the application form as easy as possible to complete.

You will receive a confirmation notification once you have submitted your application. You should take this as confirmation that we have received your application. 

Once applications close, we then work to assess all applications that we have received and we will contact all parents/carers as soon as possible to notify if support will be provided or not in the upcoming academic term. 

Age range 

Children must already be enrolled in school to be eligible to access holiday hubs. Applications are open to children and young people who will be attending school are due to attend school i.e. P1-S6 for the academic year and are over the age of 5 years. Children who attend nursery are not eligible.  

Holiday Hub schedule

Holiday Hubs run for ten weeks in total throughout the academic year, running during the October, February, Easter and Summer holidays. 

Each week the hubs run from Monday to Thursday, from 9am until 3pm. &²Ô²ú²õ±è;

Re-Allocation of Spaces

If you are offered a re-allocation space, you will recieve an email to confirm this from holidaysupport@edinburgh.gov.uk. Re-allocated spaces must be paid for within seven days of receipt of this email. Parents/carers can use the same link to our secure payment portal that is included in full year allocation letters to pay for additional spaces. 

Any acceptance or decline of the offer of re-allocated space will not have any impact on spaces already allocated to you. 

Refunds

Spaces are non-refundable within this non-statutory service unless in exceptional or emergency circumstances. 

Spaces within this provision are allocated in weeks, not days, so individual days missed will not be refunded. 

For more information contact holidaysupport@edinburgh.gov.uk

Transport 

Transport is not available as part of the holiday hub provision and is the responsibility of parent or carers to organise and manage such arrangements where required.  

We try our best to allocate participants to the nearest hub appropriate to their needs but unfortunately this is not always possible due to capacity and demand of each hub.  

Making a complaint  

Working together with contracted activity providers, we try hard to provide the best possible provision. Despite this, we recognise that things don’t always go as well as planned and mistakes will be made. â¶Ä¯&²Ô²ú²õ±è;

If you wish to record formal dissatisfaction with any aspect of the service which you receive at one of our Hubs, we advise that you first contact the activity provider in question directly to discuss or to register your dissatisfaction formally. 

Complaints regarding the service from us can be made on our website. â¶Ä¯&²Ô²ú²õ±è;

Zero tolerance &²Ô²ú²õ±è;

Â鶹ӳ»­ and each of the activity providers contracted within the holiday hub provision all operate a zero tolerance policy towards abusive and unacceptable behaviour. â¶Ä¯&²Ô²ú²õ±è;

We reserve the right to remove weeks that have been allocated to anybody who demonstrates unacceptable conduct to any member of staff within the holiday hubs provision. â¶Ä¯&²Ô²ú²õ±è;

What else is there?

 A range of other local children's ASN activities and inclusive providers  &²Ô²ú²õ±è;

For other support options visit  Support for families pages. 

Fees and contributions

Holiday Hub Parent and Carer Steering Group

We regularly consult with the holiday hub parent and carer steering group to discuss the holiday hub provision and how aspects of it should be designed / managed to maximise transparency and fairness throughout. The holiday hubs parent steering group is an open membership group and currently meets monthly via MS Teams.

Meeting dates for 2026 - 27 are listed below. All meeting will start at 10am, hosted via MS Teams. 

Tuesday 8 September - discussion notes 

Tuesday 6 October 

Friday 13 November 

Thursday 3 December 

Friday 15 January  

Tuesday 9 February 

Thursday 11 March 

Tuesday 27 April  

Friday 21 May 

Read a summary of Lessons Learned - Summer 2026

Anybody wishing to attend a meeting of the parents/carers steering group can do so by emailing holidaysupport@edinburgh.gov.uk to request an MS Teams invitation. 

Discussion notes will be uploaded here after meetings throughout the year and will then be archived at the conclusion of each annual provision. Discussion notes from the 2025-26 provision are available upon request.