NEW data has revealed the extent of the spending in Essex during the Eat Out To Help Out scheme last year.

The government scheme was introduced to help hospitality venues recover from the huge blow of the first national lockdown.

The campaign ran from August 3 to August 31, offering customers the chance to halve their bills at many of their favourite restaurants, pubs, bars and more, with the businesses able to claim the savings back from HM Revenue and Customers.

But it has since come under heavy criticism for encouraging large numbers of people out into public places during the coronavirus pandemic.

In England, 50,592 restaurants took advantage of the government scheme with 90,008,000 meals claimed for.

This meant a total of £517,102,000 was claimed in discounts, with the average amount claimed at each outlet standing at £10,200.

The average discount per meal was £5.75.

The data only covers outlets with less than 25 outlets as large chains were not required to publish the details. Values for the total number of meals claimed for and the total amount of discount claimed have been rounded to the nearest thousand. Average claimed discount per outlet is rounded to the nearest 100.**

Here is how much people in each part of Essex spent whilst the scheme was running ordered by how many meals were claimed:

The scheme was used on 108,000 occasions in Harlow, saving a total of £494,000.

The average saving per meal was £4.56 with 38 restaurants taking part, claiming £13,000 on average.