A Basingstoke-based housing association has donated £25,000 to give disadvantaged children access to laptops so they can learn from hom during lockdown.

Of the donation, Sovereign Housing Association has given £12,500 to Greenham Trust's Laptops for Lockdown Learning fund - which will be match funded by the charity up to £25,000 to support families in West Berkshire and north Hampshire.

A further £12,500, which has been boosted by a further £10,000 from another funding partner via The Good Exchange, will support families struggling to access the tech their children need for home-schooling across the rest of Sovereign’s geography from Oxfordshire to the Isle of Wight.

According to figures from Ofcom, around 9 per cent of children in the UK - between 1.1 and 1.8 million - do not have access to a laptop, desktop or tablet at home.

The majority of students in need either use parents’ mobile phones, often on pay as you go, costing up to £100 a day to access data, or have to share devices with siblings who are also learning remotely. In some cases children go without access to any device at all, severely hampering their ability to learn and widening the gap between households that have and those that have not still further.

Andrew Cooper, head of business development and fundraising for Sovereign said: “Our contribution to the Greenham Trust fund will help schools across West Berkshire and north Hampshire to buy laptops, tablets and digital devices for disadvantaged primary and secondary school pupils.

“We’ve chosen to give in this way because Greenham Trust doubles every donation made, thanks to match funding, making the money go further. Digital inclusion is a key priority for Sovereign and we want to support our communities with home schooling in lockdown.”