Scottish Executive bids for greater funding control 

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The new Scottish Executive is taking a firmer line on devolved control of lottery funds, flagged up in the post-election ‘Partnership Agreement’ policy statement issued on 15 May by the Labour-LibDem governing coalition. The document says: ‘We will work with the UK government to secure a Scottish Opportunities Fund to provide sustainable core funding to relevant voluntary organisations.’ This single sentence is a telescoped version of commitments given in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which pledged to: ‘negotiate with Whitehall to secure a Scottish Opportunities Fund to take over the responsibilities of the UK-wide New Opportunities Fund and Communities Fund in Scotland. The new fund will provide relevant voluntary organisations with an element of sustainable core funding at grassroots level and help them to secure suitable match funding from local authorities.’

The Scottish Executive has only just appointed its new culture minister, Frank McAveety, and an official spokesperson said that it was too early to be able to expand on the meaning of the statement. Some observers have suggested that the statement is a call for a single lottery distributor in Scotland, which is the position of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. More likely, however, is that Scottish ministers will want the new merged body replacing NOF and CF to have a Scottish-Executive appointed board and fully devolved control of policy directions and programme priorities. The all-important but cryptic partnership agreement sentence also encompasses another issue of concern: the need to establish long-term core funding for voluntary groups. The Executive has set up a strategic national funding review group which is undertaking work on key related issues, including a reworking of the voluntary sector Compact, examination of the need for a Scotland-wide evaluation service, and research work into outcomes funding. All of these issues range far more broadly than the lottery, but are clearly connected to it. Local authorities are concerned, for instance, about lottery funding for voluntary sector projects where exit strategies assume that continuation funding will come from them. Voluntary groups are suspicious of NOF pro-grammes that channel cash supposedly destined for the voluntary sector via local government, instead of dealing directly. Lucy McTiernan, SCVO’s corporate affairs director, said: ‘We want the new body to award funds directly to voluntary organisations – we would see this as a reemphasis of the previous CF position.

She added: ‘A single distributor is still our ideal position. Given that the whole lottery pot is shrinking, we don’t see a case for it to be managed separately.’