Over and out

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David Carpenter established the Sports Lottery Fund in England and went on to be lottery director at Sport England for six years. He also set up the high performance ‘World Class’ programmes. As he bows out of the lottery funding world, he looks back, and forwards... 

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My innings in Lotteryland is at an end. It has been great fun but for me it’s time to seek a new challenge. No more mornings when the first phone call brought delight, the second made you public enemy number one.

The Secretary of State’s findings from her reviews of both distribution and licensing are imminent; the tenth year of the National Lottery is just around the corner. Time to look back, time to look forward.

With hindsight, we can all say we should not have done that, this could have been better… but I genuinely believe the distributors have done a good job, and with some changes – including some of the suggestions outlined below –the lottery can go forward with confidence, despite falling ticket sales.

True, the Churchill Papers and the Dome were disasters; the ‘swinging bridge’ was a bit of a joke at the time; Wembley has been a continual struggle, the Royal Opera House full of controversy. But balance them against the Eden Project, some of the fantastic new museums, galleries and arts centres, and the significantly improved performances of our sportsmen and women at the Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games. And, most important of all, the huge range of new community facilities and opportunities up and down the country.

For areas in the cultural sector such as sport, arts and heritage, which normally find themselves in the ‘twilight zone’ when major government funding decisions are made, the lottery has proved to be the catalyst for a new era of investment. There is still a huge amount to do, particularly in the more challenged areas for renewal, and much of the work on capital projects, in particular, has been about trying to arrest the decline of the previous 20 years due to that very lack of investment.

As lottery distribution moves forward with diminishing funds, I would urge the Secretary of State to take a bold overview.

First and foremost, redefine exactly what the government wants to see from the distribution of lottery funds in terms of overall strategy, targeting and innovation. Put the majority of the fund into a strategic pot but also put a significant slice into a general fund. Make this a public statement and then stick with it until the end of the current licence in 2009. Although the 1998 legislation improved things a lot, the strategic overview has often remained vague at best, and at worst been bedevilled by change at short notice. Ministers have also been too quick to criticise individual distributors or individual decisions.

Then tell the specialist distributors to deliver against these strategic outcomes, including the pooling of common functions. Perhaps it is even time to sharpen their focus if they want to continue to be strategic funders: tell each distributor to set clear targets for delivery and for partnership funding levels, and get the agreement of other departments that there will be every effort to mainstream successful innovations such as has occurred with DfES for the school sport coordinators programme (an initial investment of £40m has turned into one of more than £400m). And then support them.

I would make significant change in the distribution of funds at community level by introducing a general fund under the auspices of a single distributor with appropriate regional arms. Go right back to basics and remember that the National Lottery is the ‘people’s money’ and, therefore, an important slice should be treated so. Smaller community groups and voluntary clubs do not necessarily

want to be part of somebody else’s strategic plan. They want the opportunity to renew, to survive and to carry on good work in the local community. I had many chances to attend presentations and openings at local projects and the investment at this level is usually appreciated and celebrated far more than with many major schemes. It should be possible to restructure the new NOF/Community Fund to perform this role and bring under its wing a considerably enhanced ‘Awards for All’ community outlet. By all means continue to use the existing strategic distributors or other specialist agencies as consultees, but the community projects are the ones that would derive most benefit from the ‘single front door’. As an aside, there is also the need to considerably improve project development advice across all funding sources. Maybe the enhanced lottery distributor is the place to pilot this work and attempt to eliminate market confusion.

I’d put some serious pressure on the existing distributors to reduce the National Lottery Distribution Fund well below the £1bn mark. In the early days of capital projects only and outstanding sales, it was inevitable there would be a time-lag in getting the money out. But —sorry here, former colleagues — nearly 10 years in, there is no excuse. The £1.8bn NLDF balances target set by the Secretary of State for 2004 is generous in the extreme and already I hear murmurings of difficulty meeting it. I’d tell each existing distributor to prepare a sustainability plan for their investment to date, both capital and revenue. On the capital side we really don’t want to go back to where we were, and on the revenue side we don’t want good schemes to collapse. What of Camelot? Well, fat-cats aside (and the then regulator Peter Davis should have anticipated that one), they did not get the credit they deserved in the early stages for achieving the start-up of the biggest lottery operation in the world in record time, and then delivering initially outstanding returns to good causes.

I’m not so sure about the future. For the National Lottery to progress it needs to have a balanced portfolio, and with gambling deregulation and a prohibition on introducing games such as keno??SP in regulated outlets, I see Camelot’s position shifting from an initial virtual monopoly status (albeit that was never sustainable) to a ‘boxed-in’ situation.

The daily draw and European game will help, but be prepared to run for cover from the Daily Mail and other nationals when the ‘Onion Seller from Avignon’ scoops a £10m jackpot of ‘our’ money. The government has a significant problem brewing for 2009 when the current licence ends. I can’t see anybody challenging Camelot unless they make a real hash of it. But if the portfolio remains largely unchanged, will Camelot want to re-bid? An incentivised state corporation similar to some Scandinavian countries may provide a solution.

I also have concerns about the current promotion. Originally we tried very hard to link the sporting good cause outcomes with Camelot but we failed and they didn’t appear very interested. Now they seem to have swung dramatically the other way, and I am still not sure the balance is correct. Good causes don’t sell tickets: jackpots do. At best good causes may maintain existing interest. I hope the proposed joint promotion body between Camelot, the DCMS and distributors is successful, but they have a lot of work to do. No question the lottery has achieved a lot and it needs to continue to do so. I’m proud to have the chance to contribute and present just a few thoughts.