Free sanitary products could soon be handed out to all schoolgirls in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Councillors will decide how to implement the plans after the council’s Learning and Culture Scrutiny Committee unanimously voted in favour of the idea on Monday.

A £1million fund from Welsh Government has been launched to tackle period poverty and councils including Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr are already developing similar schemes.

The committee heard some girls are missing school due to embarrassment regarding their periods, and some mothers are going without sanitary products so they can buy them for their daughters instead.

Cllr Jayne Norman, who called the debate, told the committee that free sanitary products should be “an automatic right to all.”

She said: “Menstruation affects every woman. We have no choice in the matter. And period poverty does exist – even in the ‘affluent’ Vale of Glamorgan.

“To many young women and girls, admitting that they are even having their period is embarrassing enough, without having to confess that their family cannot afford to buy them the sanitary protection they need. The protection which allows them the right of dignity and wellbeing.

“Many secondary schools already have some facilities in place to help alleviate this problem, but this is money spent out of their already very tight budgets.

“Junior schools, on the other hand, have to rely heavily on the generosity of staff members, or even in some cases, parents of some of the children.

“The facilities available to the pupils for the discrete disposal of any sanitary products is virtually non-existent.”

Vale of Glamorgan Council found seven of its eight comprehensive schools provide the sanitary products free of charge, while one school charges 20p for each use.

A total of 12 of the 16 Vale primary schools which responded to the council offer the products free of charge, while at other schools either parents or teachers provide them.

The committee was first asked to debate the issue in November last year but it has taken until April’s meeting to be discussed, the meeting was told.

Councillor Margaret Wilkinson told the meeting: “I’m disappointed this has taken a long time to come to this committee.

“This is a poverty issue. This is a hidden, quiet problem. Girls don’t want to talk about it.

“If we’re getting money from the Welsh Assembly that’s good but we don’t want to wait for it. We need this in now.”

The Vale council will receive £31,500 from the Welsh Government this financial year for sanitary equipment to be installed in schools.