The Lottery Review: CF view

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Diana Brittan, Community Fund chair, recently set out her board’s views on the Lottery review agenda, in a letter to the Culture Secretary. Here are extracts from the letter

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The Board of the Community Fund has now considered in detail the key points made in your speech at Southwark Cathedral on 20 March. The Board very much welcomed the overall approach and ideas you suggested and we will of course respond in a formal way once the Lottery Review consultation review period begins later in the summer. For now, we thought it would be important to let you see how our thinking is developing … The key points for the Community Fund are:

1. The importance given by us and the voluntary sector to our continuing independence as a grant maker (working within the framework of policy and financial directions from Government). 

2. The continuation of our local decision-making structure whilst remaining a UK-wide organisa-tion. We believe this brings our grant making close to communities. … In addition, we have retained our commitment to selecting up to two members of our 10-strong Regional Committees in England by lot so as to encourage greater participation by the general public in our decision-making.

3. The commitment to the principle of addition-ality.

4. We strongly believe that we could make best use of any new powers to distribute non-Lottery resources. We welcome the fact you are giving it consideration.

5. Being able to work with the other Lottery distributors to make things easier for applicants for instance through ‘common front doors’ and clear branding for the National Lottery good causes.

6. Working out how we can balance risk and innovation in our grant making. We welcome your initiative and look forward to working with your officials on those parts of the Financial Directions which may act as an inhibitor.

7. Using our resources to help tackle deprivation in communities working alongside or in partnership with other key players.

8. We agree with you that grant making should be used to encourage greater support for community initiatives in the longer term.

9. The level of balances in the National Lottery Distribution Fund. We accept your concern and we are already committed to reducing our NLDF balance by 50% in the next two years and have already made progress...

10. The number of distribution bodies. We believe that there should neither be a decrease nor an increase in the number of Lottery distributors. Each of the existing main distribution bodies has a clear rationale for what it does and an important level of expertise to offer. … 

There was one aspect of the Southwark speech which caused us concern. You referred to the possibility of local referendums. Whilst we certainly understand the intent of the proposal, the means of doing this would need careful thought. For instance, what questions would be asked of whom and how detailed would they be? Would they be between the good causes or down to the level of individual projects or types of service to be supported? How would a referendum be held and how often? Who would be able to vote and would the results be binding on those making the decisions, or advisory? We feel this is a complex and potentially costly proposal 

which could have a dramatic effect on the pattern of distribution and decision-making processes. Unfashionable but important causes could well be the losers. We believe there could be other ways to test out public opinion by, for example, using citizens panels where these exist in local authority areas.

The Community Fund has done much with its share of the lottery proceeds for good causes, supporting projects which benefit disadvantaged communities right across the UK. The Community Fund has always taken the view that if its share was increased more could be done in an effective way to deliver more help to deal with deprivation. …