Jenny Randerson

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We in Wales are taking the lottery review very seriously and have extensively consulted. Money for good causes touches virtually every aspect of Welsh life; over £620m has been contributed to projects or individuals in Wales. It’s a significant chunk of money and has a huge impact.

It’s clear that in some areas of Wales the take-up of lottery isn’t as high as in others. These are the ‘cold spots’. This could be for a number of reasons: low capacity to provide good-quality applications, lack of a support network, basic lack of good projects, a lack of project management skills, failure of the area to buy into projects, etc. I’ve asked the lottery distributors to look carefully at their funding or cold spots and to come up with plans for ensuring a more equitable distribution across Wales. But we also need to address the reasons why some communities and certain parts of Wales – often areas of social and economic deprivation – haven’t submitted applications to date, and we must empower organisations representing these areas, especially the community and voluntary sector, to do so in future. I consider this to be a major priority.

Funding could usefully be employed in supporting development work. For instance, the HLF have recently created a development team in Wales for the specific purpose of creating opportunities for heritage funding. It will be interesting to see how this work is taken forward.

Awards for All in Wales is a good example of joint working. It is successfully operated by three of the distributors. I see merit in considering whether this scheme should involve all of the distributors in Wales. I’d also like to see whether it’s possible for the scheme to be expanded to increase the level of grants available. There is also a role for local authorities. All too often I’m told projects cannot get off the ground because of a lack of support from the local authority. This has to change. As community leaders, local authorities have to recognise the potential for lottery funding and the benefits it can bring to their local communities.

I welcome the work that the voluntary sector does. No one sector has the right to provide the delivery mechanism. The beneficiaries are what matters. In future I’d like to see far more joined-up working between sectors and closer cooperation. Sustainability will always be a key issue. Good projects fail because they don’t have a sufficient exit strategy or haven’t planned for future funding. It could be that some of the funding from the lottery isn’t being made available over a long enough period, or that projects are not preparing robust business plans. We need to address this in the review. Linked to sustainability is measurement and evaluation. Any organisation should incorporate the need to measure and evaluate the strategy to ensure it continues to deliver its aims and objectives. With less income from the lottery than in the early days we need to make sure we make the best of funding. We can only do that if we understand whether previous funding methods have been a success. The time is now right for us to consider the issues in Wales and develop Welsh solutions. Our plan for Wales and my culture strategy, Creative Future, give a clear commitment for the Assembly to ensure that all main lottery funding streams have a clear Welsh direction. At present only two of the five lottery distributors are directly accountable to the Assembly. Given that we’ve been living with devolu-tion for four years I intend to use the Lottery Review to explore how the Assembly can become more involved in the way lottery money is used in Wales. But this isn’t about control, nor about influencing funding decisions on individual applications; it’s about setting the overall strategic direction to make sure we maximise the benefits. Lottery funding is an alternative to exchequer funding but it would be foolish if it duplicated that which government is providing, or worse, worked in the opposite direction.

The problems and issues in Wales are different from those in England and we need to make sure that is recognised. 

Jenny Randerson is the Welsh Assembly government minister for Culture, Sport and the Welsh language. This is the edited text of her keynote speech to Lottery Monitor’s 1st annual Wales conference held on 15 October 2002