How much further will they go?

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Alex Klaushofer looks at a model scheme for public involvement in Lottery funding decisions, and asks what else is on the stocks

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The Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, in her big Lottery speech at Southwark Cathedral in March, made it clear that, in future, Lottery distributors will need to do more to involve the public in funding decisions. ‘There’s further to go in making the Lottery more responsive and democratic,’ she said.

In theory she is articulating a universal sentiment. Everyone in the Lottery world, it seems, favours public involvement –while no one is sure exactly where to find it. Yet there is no shortage of ideas. In a bid to inject some populist democracy into the Lottery at a national level, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is in discussions with Camelot about the possibility of players indicating on their Lottery tickets where they would like their money to go. Locally, the Culture Secretary wants to see referenda to decide how pots of money should be spent. The distributors, some of whom are less keen on this latter idea, are nevertheless all trying to demonstrate greater levels of local involvement in their decision-making. One mechanism that stands out as an exercise in popular participation – and which Tessa Jowell cited approvingly in her Southwark speech – is the Community Fund’s By Lot scheme. Each of the organisation’s nine England regional awards committees recruit up to two members of the public as part of their funding decisions operation. Candidates are chosen randomly: CF administrative staff identify up to 100 names on the electoral register whose roll number includes the winning number of the Lottery bonus ball for that week. These individuals receive a letter asking if they would be interested in joining the committee and, following interviews, one or two are appointed for a three-year term.

By Lot began in Yorkshire in 1998, as the brainchild of Martin Wainwright, the then chair of the CF’s Yorkshire & Humber Regional Awards Committee. ‘We had a very good committee in Yorkshire, but there was no public involvement,’ he says. Wainwright was enthused by the idea of random choice, which originated in the Greek polis. ‘The reason it worked in ancient Athens was because the people who were chosen from were intelligent and capable. I take the same view of contemporary Britain. We have a highly educated society, and given the right training, anyone can do the job,’ he says.

The first appointee – still serving – was Amanda Richardson. Lisa Smith, the Community Fund’s regional manager for Yorkshire & Humber and an ex-officio member of the awards committee, says that Richardson has been an active member of the committee. ‘There were doubts about whether someone brought in through random choice could make a full contribution,’ says Smith. But now, ‘A lot of early resistance has gone.’ By Lot went national in the summer of 1999. The Community Fund’s Director of Operations for England, Richard Gutch, says that bringing ordinary members of the public on to award-making bodies is invaluable. ‘It gives a completely different perspective from that of our other committee members, who tend to be drawn from the voluntary sector,’ he says.

Gutch says good induction is essential if newcomers are to adapt to committee life: ‘It’s very important, otherwise you’re setting people up to fail.’ Karen Wall, appointed to the CF’s south-west regional awards committee last August, is testimony to the fact that By Lot reaches people who are inaccessible by more conventional recruitment methods. Until Wall was invited to apply, it had never occurred to her to join a quango. ‘I thought, that sounds interesting, I might be able to contribute,’ she says. ‘And I thought it might be able to help me in my work.’ As a health visitor for Sure Start in Penzance, Wall has been able to bring local knowledge and a particular expertise in health issues to the committee. As such, she is aware that – despite her unforeseen quango role – her background gives her a natural affinity with the committee’s work. Nevertheless, she questions how far even random choice can access the really hard-to-reach-people: ‘It’s self-selecting. You’re going to end up with a similar sort of person whether you choose By Lot or by application.’ The scheme’s originator, of course, has no such doubts. ‘It’s super-democratic,’ Wainwright says. ‘You don’t need to put yourself forward, the magic finger of random choice plucks you.’ In his view, the scheme should be made compulsory for all the distributors. ‘I think Tessa Jowell should be brave and do it. The Community Fund experience shows that it works,’ he says.

So far, no other distributor is considering adopting the By Lot approach. Instead, they are tending to focus their energies on improving their regional structures. The Heritage Fund is opening its nine regional offices later this month, while Sport England is at an earlier stage of considering how to increase its local responsiveness. One model it is looking at is the involvement of regional consultative groups in the Green Spaces programme that it administers for NOF: the groups have often made funding decisions. ‘It’s one of many ideas we’re considering where there is local input,’ a Sport England spokesperson says.

Awards for All England, as part of its joint-pot restructuring, is expanding its regional committees from 10 to 14 members by June. Mike Wilkins, A4A England director, says: ‘The idea of getting local people is that we are reflecting the particular needs of a region as accurately as we can.’ Wilkins does not intend, however, to use any innovative recruitment techniques for his expanded committees, nor will they involve ‘ordinary members of the public’. The New Opportunities Fund – also given as an example of good practice by the Culture Secretary – feels it is doing enough to promote public involvement. Stephen Dunmore, NOF’s chief executive, says: ‘The way we develop the majority of our pro-grammes already reflects the Secretary of State’s priorities for local involvement.’ He cites various NOF programmes –Activities for Young People, PE and Sport in Schools, Fair Share – as examples of extensive consultations with local communities and service users. 

Dunmore is sceptical about the merits of some of the more ambitious ideas for public involvement. ‘We already have the evidence from independent polls about the public’s priorities for health and education,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure what else you can learn from the very limited questions you could ask on the purchase of a ticket.’ The current combination of government-set strategic priorities and local preferences, identified through partnerships, offers, Dunmore says, ‘a more rational and joined-up way of doing things.’ Robin Clarke, senior research fellow in public involvement at the think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research, agrees that big ideas need careful thinking through. Voting on funding preferences, through lottery tickets or local referenda, may not give a true indication of people’s preferences, he cautions. ‘You have to be careful about the information you give to people, so that they don’t give a top-of-the-mind response. For example, people who don’t have kids may think that education doesn’t matter to them, instead of thinking of the knock-on effects.’ Less may be more in this area, Clarke suggests. ‘You either do it in a fairly small-scale, but meaningful way, like By Lot, or in a mass way, like referenda, and the danger is that you get a knee-jerk rather than a considered response.’ But Tom Bentley, the director of the think-tank Demos, argues that more risk is precisely what is needed. One way of enhancing public involvement, he says, would be the allocation of small amounts of unconditional funding given to social entrepreneurs active in the community. ‘Only by taking some risk can real innovation occur,’ he says. ‘What this means is an acceptance that not every scheme will succeed, and failure is actually part of the innovation process.’