Merger is on – official

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The government is signalling its intention to drive through lottery funding reform. Jane Taylor reports 

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Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, has confirmed that the Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund will merge. In a speech to a regeneration conference at the Lowry Centre in Salford on 25 February, Jowell said: ‘I am keen to go ahead with the mooted proposal to merge the Community Fund with NOF. The result would be a single community distributor.’ The business case for a merger, she said, was strong. ‘But I want a new community lottery distributor to be much more than the sum of its parts, setting the pace for modernising delivery of lottery funding.’ The Culture Secretary went on to try to mollify critics of the proposed merger, including members of the Community Fund’s own board who have raised doubts about the independence of the new distributor, levels of funding and the preservation of additionality. Jowell said: ‘We do not want to lose the distinctive identities of NOF and the Community Fund. And let me state quite clearly that under the new body the proportion of charitable funding would not diminish. Nor would government exercise higher control over this strand of funding than it does at present.’ The Culture Secretary’s words of reassurance follow on from similar commitments given at the end of January in the Lords by the junior culture minister, Tessa Blackstone. Both ministers also emphasised the government’s intention to involve the voluntary and community sector in shaping the role of the new lottery body.

While NOF welcomed the merger announcement, the Community Fund’s reaction was both guarded and coded, ending with the words: ‘The Board will take into account the promises the Secretary of State has made when it considers its position on the creation of a new body when it meets in May.’ This statement confirms the Community Fund’s intention not to bring forward the date of its next board meeting in order to enable a swift endorsement of the merger plan. And the CF’s refusal to be rushed into acceptance of the decision is reflected in an article written for Lottery Monitor by the CF’s chair, Diana Brittan: ‘…To rush headlong towards the creation of a new lottery distributor when the tasks and responsibilities of that new body have not been fully thought through would be foolish.’ The Community Fund has also released the results of an opinion survey it commissioned from the online pollster YouGov, showing that three-quarters of respondents support the idea that good causes distribution should be independent of government control. The survey confirmed that the public knows very little about any of the lottery distributors and in principle supports any suggestion to simplify distribution. Thus, asked about their preference between several separate distributors or a single one, 60% of those polled opted for a single funder against 30% who said keep them separate. And the notion of a ‘one-stop shop’ for all lottery applications received 78% support. The poll also revealed very strong support for a system of marking lottery slips to choose which good causes their cash should support: 71% approved of the idea.