From the July 2001 Issue

Contents:  

1. PAYMENT BY RESULTS LICENCE FOR CAMELOT 

2. £150m deprivation scheme announced 

3. Awards for Almost All 

4. ETHNIC PROJECTS WIN CAPITAL GRANTS 

5. Hitting the Spot 

6. Take your partners 

7. Community Fund 

8. Background and commentary 

9. Edited text of the keynote speech by the new Secretary of State at the DCMS 

10. Edited text of the keynote speech by the Chair of the Lottery regulator, outlining the new seven-year licence 

11. Edited text of the keynote speech by the head of the New Opportunities Fund 

12. Steve Batt explains his county’s approach to rural deprivation 

13. After Thoughts by Jane taylor 
    

MAIN STORY

PAYMENT BY RESULTS LICENCE FOR CAMELOT

If Camelot profits, so will good causes. Jane Taylor reports on the Lottery operator’s new terms.

Camelot, the National Lottery operator, will be hard-pressed to raise £10bn for good causes over the next seven years, despite the inclusion of several carrot-and-stick measures in the new licence, the Lottery regulator has revealed.

Lord Burns, chair of the National Lottery Commission, chose the Lottery Monitor Annual Conference at the end of June to reveal the details of Camelot’s second-term licence, commencing 27 January 2002.

Describing the licence as ‘payment by results’, Lord Burns outlined a series of penalties and incentives designed to hold the Lottery operator to its promises, and to maximise returns to prizewinners and good causes.

Lord Burns confirmed his previously stated view that Camelot’s projected sales figures for 2002-2009 were over-optimistic. As a consequence, money going to good causes was, at best, likely to remain at similar levels to the current licence: £10bn over the seven-year term, rather than Camelot’s projected £15bn. Lord Burns said: ‘£15bn is a highly challenging ambition. In fact, we believe the Commission’s own lower expectations represent a tough challenge.’

Camelot responded by admitting for the first time that it has abandoned the £15bn business plan target. This has little to do with the terms of the licence, however. Rather, Camelot is accepting that the financial projections it drew up two years ago were over-optimistic, set against the subsequent performance of its key games. And it is trying to keep up political pressure to limit the expected liberalisation of gaming laws, which it believes could seriously affect its sales.

A major review of gaming law, conducted by the former Treasury economic adviser Sir Alan Budd, was to have been published in May, but is now expected towards the end of July.

When Camelot meets with Tessa Jowell at the DCMS on 12 July, gaming law will be on the agenda. Sue Slipman, Camelot’s external relations director, says: ‘The review is critical. We’ll point out to the Secretary of State that the National Lottery is their brand, and they need a consistent and coherent policy to protect it.’

To this end, Camelot is anxious to persuade Tessa Jowell to become a more enthusiastic champion of the Lottery than her predecessor Chris Smith. Camelot wants to see a united front with government, regulator and distributors, to promote the considerable payback of the Lottery, not just to the Exchequer but also through the good causes.

£150m deprivation scheme announced

The Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund are to run a joint initiative to get more Lottery grants to the most deprived areas of the UK. The initiative, nameless as yet, was announced by the new DCMS Secretary of State, Tessa Jowell, at the Lottery Monitor annual conference.

The scheme will start in April 2002 and run for three years. CF will contribute £100m out of its existing grant budgets and NOF will gain an extra £50m to contribute. DCMS officials are examining whether they can enable NOF to distribute its share of money without a new set of ‘policy directions’, as this statutory procedure would slow down the implementation timetable.

The two distributors will jointly identify 50 areas on which to target the cash. Paul Hensby, communications director at the CF, emphasises the open nature of the process: ‘We will be drawing on our strategic review to identify areas; and then we’ll discuss it with NOF. What this won’t be is blind adherence to the 50 most deprived areas.’ A DCMS official says the department will be taking a close interest in the selection of target areas.

The initiative was flagged up by Labour during the election campaign. It is almost certainly inspired by a pilot scheme run by the Community Fund in 1999-2000, ‘Brass for Barnsley’. In that scheme, the CF took extensive proactive measures to double the value of Lottery funds going to an area of high deprivation which had persistently failed to claim its fair share of grants.

The CF achieved its impressive result by committing its regional staff to an intensive local community development role. It recognises however that it could not support ‘50 Barnsleys’, so that particular model will be of limited use for the new initiative.

Other distributors may be drawn into the scheme, too. The Secretary of State, in her speech, said: ‘I will be looking to other distributors either to join the initiative or to make similar progress themselves in targeting...’ While some take this as a general exhortation, DCMS officials confirm that they see no reason why the other distributors should not contribute directly to the joint CF/NOF scheme.

Awards for Almost All

The joint-distributor small grants scheme was further boosted at the end of last month as Wales launched its own programme, and the New Opportunities Fund signed up to the English and Welsh schemes. But A4A Wales has not won universal endorsement.

NOF expects to join the Scottish and N Ireland schemes by September. It will award grants in its existing areas of health, education and the environment, and its formal inclusion technically extends eligibility beyond community groups to a range of other small and large statutory organisations (including parish councils). The A4A emphasis remains firmly on favoring small community groups.

ETHNIC PROJECTS WIN CAPITAL GRANTS

Distributors are finally starting to deliver big funding to black groups. Apala Chowdhury reports.

Black and minority ethnic projects across England have been given a £53m cash boost in two recent rounds of Lottery awards made by the Millennium Commission and the Arts Council of England.

At the end of June the MC announced £24m for 10 winners of its fifth and final round of capital projects awards, this one specifically aimed at BME projects. These included Leicester’s Peepul Centre (£7m), the Bernie Grant Centre (£5m) in north London, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust (£4.4m) for its proposed technical college in south-east London and ASCENT 2000, a project to convert part of an east London church into an arts and education facility (£336,500). All four groups had previously applied unsuccessfully, and this time around were given development funds totalling £623,000 to help improve their bids.

The Asha Foundation’s £10m bid for a multi-cultural, multi-faith centre in Harrow once again failed to win MC money. Its director Zerbanoo Gifford comments: ‘If it hadn’t been for Asha, there would not have been a fifth round. Last year we calculated that 1% of MC money had gone to BME groups. In response, the MC introduced round five. We may have failed, but at least we opened up the system for other minority groups.’ Gifford is not giving up: ‘There are other Lottery funds out there and we will be applying for them.’

Hitting the Spot

Community Fund research reveals a patchwork of voluntary-sector grants for deprivation projects. Jane Taylor reports

The timing may be lucky coincidence but the release of the Community Fund’s latest piece of research chimes nicely with the strong message from the new DCMS Secretary of State that social inclusion and deprivation will continue to dominate her agenda, and by extension, those of the Lottery distributors.

The CF research, Mapping Grants to Deprived Areas in England, is a brave attempt by the Newcastle University Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) to source funding for an entire sub-section of the voluntary sector.

Brave, because no one has ever attempted such a thing before and, as the authors acknowledge, they haven’t quite succeeded at this pass. But what they have produced is a tantalising snapshot, behind which lies important methodological work which both the authors and the Community Fund hope might form the groundwork for a permanent and far more comprehensive tracking system.

Take your partners

Alex Klaushofer sheds some light on the governments latest scheme for joined-up working - local strategic partnerships Under the neighbourhood renewal strategy, a fund of £900m over three years is available to local authorities in the 88 most deprived areas of England. To qualify for a share of the money, the relevant council must have set up an LSP by February 2002 (altnerships, or LSPs, are the latest Big Idea in regeneration policy, and one that local authority Lottery officers and community groups alike will want to take an interest in. The aim is to draw together a wide range of public, private and voluntary-sector interests in an effort to join up service provision and increase community involvement.

Community Fund

In mid-June the Community Fund launched a review of its strategic plan for 2002 to 2007. The plan will form the framework for the CF’s grant-making, so is a significant document. The CF is canvassing views from interested parties up to 14 September, to enable it to produce a draft plan by December, for implementation by April 2002.

Below is a short commentary, followed by a summary of the UK-wide consultation paper. However, if you are considering responding, be sure you get hold of the additional document which is specific to your English region or country (see box right for contact details).

Background and commentary

The CF’s current strategic plan runs from 1999 to April 2002. The new one will last two years longer. While the CF’s overall aim remains the same, the new consultation document is based firmly on an assumption of sharply declining income. As noted in Lottery Monitor last month, the CF’s budget figures are extremely conservative set against not just Camelot’s increased second-term sales targets, but even against the regulator’s expectations of income for good causes. Given that the strategic approach is so heavily linked to this projection of declining income, it would be reasonable to ask why the forecasts are quite so pessimistic.

Edited text of the keynote speech by the new Secretary of State at the DCMS

The effects of the Lottery go far beyond bricks and mortar. There has been a marked shift away from large capital projects to people-centred projects. The number of small grants going to community groups has trebled since 1998.

The Lottery also makes an enormous contribution to a much wider agenda shared by central and local government and the voluntary and community sector. Reducing social exclusion, encouraging lifelong learning, improving public health, protecting the environment, reducing crime, developing skills – all these are among the benefits of Lottery funding which I am keen to see developed.

Edited text of the keynote speech by the Chair of the Lottery regulator, outlining the new seven-year licence

We have today published the new seven-year Lottery licence. We are confident that it offers a fair deal for the Lottery’s beneficiaries.

Under the new licence the good causes can still expect to get in total at least 28.5% of sales. This is similar to the amount that was committed in 1994.

The commission’s expectations are grounded in realism, and informed by the worldwide expertise it has developed.

In cash terms we think that Lottery sales over the next seven years could well be around the present level of about £5bn a year. This would mean good causes again receiving more than £10bn over the life of the next licence, with interest on top of that.

Edited text of the keynote speech by the head of the NewOpportunities Fund

believe the New Opportunities Fund has been developing a very distinct approach to distributing Lottery funding.

There are three components. The first is the way we complement mainstream funding. We are looking to fund activities which are additional to government expenditure, but which fit within the strategic frameworks for health, education and environment and, where possible, support or develop existing initiatives.

So, for example:

our Community Access to Lifelong Learning programme is providing revenue funding to UK Online centres, which complements government funding for capital costs, and is tied into the National Grid for Learning;

our new-build neighbourhood nurseries programme will provide capital funding which complements revenue funding from the Department for Education and Skills.

Steve Batt explains his county’s approach to rural deprivation

In May, Lottery Monitor reported on the latest government attempt to encourage local joined-up working. And in June, you carried a letter from a council officer concerned that official deprivation indices miss areas of poverty, particularly in rural areas.

I would like to explain how I believe we are tackling both issues in our project in Devon. It is a good example of ‘brokering tables’ working in a rural county at local level.

As your correspondent said, national statistics tend to a more urban dimension and are often difficult to assess in rural areas. We think our programme is important in targeting those areas in greatest need, often within wards that score highly on indices of multiple deprivation – but not necessarily so.

The programme is called Community Action for Rural Devon (CARD) and is being run as a pilot project over two years. It started in April 2000 and covers four of the seven rural District Council areas: Torridge, North Devon, West Devon and South Hams.

Four communities’ support workers have been employed to act as ‘GPs’, with a remit to work both with communities that are statistically recognised as having deprivation, and also with those that may fall out of these statistics at a very local level, such as one village in an otherwise affluent area.

After  Thoughts by Jane taylor

Continuing my exclusive, free recruitment-agency service for top Lottery jobs, I can announce this month that the Community Fund is officially seeking a new Chief Executive to replace Nigel Pittman’s caretaker role. If you are an entrepreneurial, risk-taking character with a sparkling track record in the private sector, you may wish to consider applying. To the CF Chair Diana Brittan, of course, not to me.

Once more, a government minister repeats the call for a more joined-up approach by the distributors. Tessa Jowell made the exhortation at our annual conference and from the evidence of delegates’ comments during workshop and panel sessions, the need is still great. Let me offer two examples from this month’s newsletter as more evidence. First, we learn that the frequently lauded Awards for All scheme is up and running in Wales, but without two of the five bodies participating. Both Huw Jones and Richard Turner put up vigorous defences on behalf of Sports Council Wales and Arts Council Wales respectively. They are, they say, already more local, more efficient, more democratic. But not necessarily more accessible – and surely it cannot be beyond the wit of either body to enter the joint scheme whilst preserving the best of their existing arrangements.

My second example is at the opposite end of the scale: why on earth have the recently successful groups seeking capital funding such as the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust and the Peepul Centre had to go through two entirely separate Lottery applications to two different boards? Let’s not even consider the benefits to the applicants of joining-up that process: what about the efficiency savings for the boards themselves? No doubt I’m being simple-minded about this, but that’s my prerogative in this column. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.

While I’m in brickbat mode, here’s one for the government. I was quizzing the DCMS about the various post-election shuffles in departmental responsibilities and we got onto the subject of regions. ‘Oh,’ came the comment, ‘They’ve been scattered to the four winds.’

And so they have: the inert English assemblies are left as a rump responsibility at the DTLR, Government Offices and the Regional Co-ordination Unit go to Cabinet Office, RDAs are jettisoned off to DTI and the new DEFRA claims a bit of rural regeneration interest. SRB and ESF are floating between DTLR and DTI. Strategic? Joined-up? Practise what you preach.

Am I being too cynical to think that there’s a slight tension between two elements of a ministerial statement that says, firstly, there must be more targeting of Lottery funds on areas of need, and secondly, there must be more public involvement in deciding on Lottery projects?

One way the two notions can be married up is by ensuring that formal consultation opportunities are maximised. Two strategic reviews are running at the moment, as well as NOF’s Third Round consultations. The Community Fund has promised (see news story, page 1) to take account of its current consultation when it draws up its shortlist of candidate areas for the new £150m targeted initiative with NOF. This matters. I hope readers will grab the opportunity and extend it to anyone they know with an interest in Lottery funding. But hurry, because the summer always disappears before you know it.