One mother said getting the chance to pick up free uniforms enabled her to spend more on summer holiday activities with her children<\/p>\n
A charity offering parents the chance to pick up second hand school uniforms for free said demand for its services "has never been higher".<\/p>\n
Wirral Free Uniforms for Schools, which has 12 hubs across Wirral and has been going for 14 years, said uniforms are still rising in price despite government guidelines.<\/p>\n
Demand has risen even in "affluent areas" thanks to "posher schools" charging high fees for certain mandatory uniform items, it said.<\/p>\n
Project co-ordinator Petra Davies said: "The cost of uniform, despite the government guidelines, is still rising in price and people just cannot afford it."<\/p>\n
Research from charity the Children's Society found 68% of parents across north-west England said this year's school holidays were costing more than last year's.<\/p>\n
The charity helped successfully campaign for changes in government rules to restrict the number of branded items schools demand in school uniforms – in theory allowing parents to by cheaper generic clothing.<\/p>\n
Petra Davies, from charity Wirral FUSS, said demand for uniforms has "never been higher"<\/p>\n
However, Davies said there were "caveats" – which meant in some cases even without logos the correct item of clothing was difficult to find outside of the school itself.<\/p>\n
"There's a girl school who have a navy jumper with a white stripe, and the school is saying you don't need the logo on that jumper any longer, but in actual fact it's branded because of the white stripe," she said.<\/p>\n
"They are abiding by knocking down the number of logo'd items but there are lots of ways that the schools can get around it."<\/p>\n
Davies also mentioned a school in Birkenhead, considered "posh" in the area, which charges \u00a352 for a school rugby top alone.<\/p>\n
Viktoria, who moved to England from Ukraine, said the uniform bank had been a "big help" adjusting to her new life<\/p>\n
"We have people who, in the posh schools, their uniform is actually more expensive than anyone else's so it really helps them if we can give stuff away," she said.<\/p>\n
One mother-of-four at the charity's Birkenhead hub said: "It's really helpful, it means that I can give the children days out and things like that rather than spend it on the uniform.<\/p>\n