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Debate: furious at missing out
by Neil Bradbury, Lottery Officer, South Tyneside MBC
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1 March was memorable for me: my first day in my job as Lottery Officer at South
Tyneside. It was encouraging to see that South Tyneside was on the draft list of areas for the new Fair Share scheme. The area is a recognised priority in many Lottery distributors’ strategies, due to its low levels of Lottery support and high deprivation.
So I was somewhat upset when, in the midst of learning where the photocopier was, we received a letter informing us that we would not be getting money from the Fair Share scheme. It is inevitable that some communities will lose out in any allocation. However, this announcement was particularly surprising to us, as we had previously been asked to meet with the distributors to prepare the way for receiving this money. It is obvious that, even until recently, these officers thought that we would receive it. The way the process was handled, with no public consultation and a fog of rumour, has done nothing to help the transparency of the Lottery.
In the last few weeks I have been explaining the methodology used for determining eligibility to elected members and community leaders in the borough, furious at missing out on an important slice of funding. Two main concerns emerge.
The first is that once an area is identified as one of the 100 most deprived, there is no further differentiation in terms of scope of deprivation. Secondly, it seems strange that the methodology would take special consideration of Community Fund levels of funding. Fair Share is about the failure of the Lottery as a whole. I am sure I would not be alone in describing the Community Fund and NOF as some of the better performers in recognising the needs of deprived communities. Other boards with a worse reputation appear to have escaped ‘scot free’. All these problems have caused great anger in South
Tyneside. The council, the local MPs and the LSP have written to Tessa Jowell to express their frustration. The perception is that this scheme is not a Fair Share at all.
The only consolation is that the scheme seems much less substantial than it did at first. In the past six years the Lottery has handed out more than £10bn. The £168m promised is 1.68% of this. If the Lottery boards seriously want to target the problem they need to be more proactive and give larger amounts of money to deprived communities. This is common practice with virtually every other regenerative
funder. Hopefully the forthcoming DCMS review will address whether the Lottery exists to reverse disadvantage or to concrete it by giving money to the usual suspects.
Neil.Bradbury@s-tyneside-mbc.gov.uk