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From
the February 2001 Issue
Contents
:
League
tables puts query on parity A
greater volume of smaller grants - more than 18,000 - were distributed
in 2000 but there was less sign than expected of a general
redistribution of awards to areas of disadvantage. Barbara Bloomfield
explains the findings of our annual survey of Lottery grants. More
grants were awarded last year than ever before. A total of 18,290 were
distributed to projects compared with 16,620 in 1999. The rise, of
course, was due to the amazing success of Awards for All in getting
small grants out, quickly and efficiently, into communities. The
average size of award has fallen from £54,880 in 1999 to £43,325 in
2000 (it was £227,913 in 1995, the first year of Lottery funding) and
the amount distributed was smaller in 2000, £792m against £912m the
year before. The
figures seem to show a disappointing amount of redistribution of Lottery
funding to disadvantaged communities. Contrary to expectations, the
league table positions of many local authority areas in the Eastern
region and the East Midlands (traditionally two of the least successful
areas of England in terms of applying for grants) show that many
authorities are slipping down rather than going up. For example, in the
Eastern region, 32 local authority areas went down while only 12 rose
and four stayed the same, while in the East Midlands, 22 went down, 17
went up and one stayed the same (or within one point.) There
seems to have been little movement towards regional parity since last
year. Table 1 shows that London’s share of Lottery money has gone down
by six percent, but other regions have stayed almost the same as 1999.
(As regular readers will know, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
always score above average because their share of Lottery money is
weighted for disadvantage.) Our
league table is famously hard to compile because just one large grant
can skew the figures unfairly towards the place where the application
originated. So can unusual population statistics, for example, the City
of London always tops the Lottery funding ladder because it has a small
population. We should also acknowledge that some Boards may be making
more headway than others when it comes to reaching the poorest parts of
the country. But
those who expected to see a dramatic change in the pattern of
grant-making will be disappointed by these figures.
Recently,
we have seen a move towards allocating Lottery funds, or targeting
particular areas in order to raise the number of bids. Barnsley hosted
“Brass for Barnsley,” which succeeded in getting more cash to
community groups while NOF’s £150m for cancer equipment and care was
an example of simple allocation. It
seems that allocation will be, increasingly, the name of the game from
now on. But all this is taking place without a clear discussion. As one
Lottery Officer put it: “If allocation is what’s happening the
Boards need to be transparent about it. The good thing about allocation
is it saves time and effort as long as everyone’s got access to that
and it’s not just the usual suspects.” The
trouble with competitive bidding is that it wastes precious resources
and organisations such as local authorities, LEAs and regeneration
partnerships cannot afford to waste time on unsuccessful schemes. Stephen
Dunmore, NOF’s Chief Executive hinted that the necessity for
competitive bidding might be phased out for some Lottery programmes in
NOF’s next round. He told a meeting of regeneration partnerships:
“Even if you target particular funding, people have to go through the
bidding process for every Lottery grant and in the next round we will
look at whether that is really necessary.” A
recent example that points up some of the advantages and disadvantages
of allocations is the Space for Sports and Arts, a £130m funding
package made up of £75m from the Treasury’s Capital Modernisation
Fund and £55m from - Sport England, ACE and, subject to public
consultation, round three of the NOF. This
programme will make funds available to create around 350 multi-purpose
halls on school sites for pupil and community use. 64 local authorities
have been invited to submit bids. But
several schools have contacted Lottery Monitor recently to say that they
were given only two weeks notice in November last year to consult.
Others claimed that they had not been consulted at all but rather
informed by their local authority that a bid for an arts-and-sports hall
would be made on their behalf. Graham
Bond, the Space for Sports and Arts Project Manager at the DCMS said
they recognised the concerns of LEAs and schools about tight timings
which were caused by the fact that the CMF money has to be committed to
projects no later than March 2002. He
added: “The two stage application process was to identify outline
proposals between 6 October and 4 December last year. This will enable
LEAs to proceed to the detailed application stage with a degree of
certainty, help ensure that they can take up their full allocations and
that scarce resources are not wasted developing projects which may not
ultimately be successful.” Allocating
funds in this way alleviates some of the “Lottery fatigue” that
organisations which had been unsuccessful in the past were feeling. And
it’s a vital way to get LEAs, LAs and regeneration partnerships
involved in distributing funds to the neediest spots. News
In Brief
Sport
England have given nearly 5,000 awards worth more than £15m in total
since the scheme began in August 1999. Ethnic minorities, women and
girls, people with disabilities and schools, as well as sports clubs,
have all benefited from the programme.
Camelot’s
Chief Executive is promising a fifty percent increase in the amount of
money available to good causes in the next licence period. Although the
National Lottery Commission argued that the figure of £15bn for the
period 2001-2008 might be “over-ambitious”, Camelot is sticking by
the sums it presented to the Commission back in March last year. The
final figure to good causes for the licence that expires in September
this year is expected to be £10bn.
Research
commissioned by the NLCB into their first grants programme which was
launched in 1995 and which funded projects aiming to tackle poverty has
concluded that the grants are getting to the right people.
A
partnership of seven organisations has won the contest to run the
Millennium Commission’s £100m endowment scheme. Called unLTD, the
consortium will support individual ‘social entrepreneurs’ with
grants, initially of £2,000 each but with later chances to get
larger-scale funding. The winning bid was put together by unLTD, the
Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, made up of Ashoka(UK) Trust,
Changemakers, Comic Relief, Community Action Network (CAN), Scarman
Trust, School for Social Entrepreneurs and Social Entrepreneurs Network
in Scotland. Features
Increasing
amounts of Lottery money is being allocated rather than being open to
all through competitive bidding. However, some are questioning whether
the process is being handled transparently. Virtually
everyone involved in Lottery funding agrees that the game’s profits
should go to those who need it most. The question is how best to target
disadvantage? As our ‘league table’ of grants awarded in 2000 shows,
there was surprisingly little redistribution of Lottery cash towards the
poorest areas last year.
Regeneration
projects may be familiar with the idea of a brokering table, where a
range of funders can get together with applicants to discuss the funding
needs of a specific project. Now the South West Regional Development
Agency and the Regional Lottery Partnership are working together to
develop the idea further. “The
idea is to bring together the funding agencies and the applicant so
there is a single point of contact to the various funders,” said Ian
Piper, head of regeneration and policy for the SWRDA.
Peter
Riley, Lottery Officer for Wirral MBC, describes how his team bring
a professionalism to the co-ordination of Lottery bids. You
mark your six numbers on the Lottery ticket, present it with your pound
to the shop assistant, leave with your fingers crossed and hope that
this time it could be you. We can all dream of how we would spend the
odd million or two and how many peoples lives we could change with our
winnings. To be invited to do a job where you can make a difference,
even change peoples lives, is a position offering real job satisfaction. |
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