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National Lottery Funding

December 2008

Summary

From the start of the National Lottery in November 1994 to December 2008, the broader Lancashire area had received £311 million pounds of funding for over 5,500. Comparisons on a funding per head basis reveal that the broader Lancashire area with £215 per head has a low figure in comparison to the UK average of £336.

Major schemes can significantly affect the per head average and in Lancashire no single project has so far received more than £10m. In comparison, the £600m spent on the Millennium Dome and the £120m on Wembley Stadium, plus many grants of over £50m to major museums etc., show how comparisons between areas can be problematic.

Introduction

This research monitor uses (External) national lottery grants information released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sports. The article presents figures for the number and value of lottery funded projects for all local authorities in the Lancashire County Council area and for the two unitary authorities of Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool. Table 1 also includes results at the North West and UK levels for comparative purposes.

The 2007 mid-year population estimates have been used to derive values of lottery funding per head, in order to allow comparisons with the regional and national figures. The per-head figures involve adding financial values together from different years, with no adjustments being made for inflation. This approach is therefore rather basic and should be viewed with some caution.

Please note that the amount of funding allocated to some authorities is in reality overstated because of the local presence of organisations that have a responsibility for a larger area. Lancashire County Council's location in central Preston is a prime example of this effect. The monies received for various County Council projects will be spread across the county.

The proceeds of the National Lottery have over the years been allocated to seven different headings (see Table 1). At present, the fund four good causes: arts, heritage, sport, and the joint good cause of health, education, the environment and charitable expenditure. The separate causes of charitable expenditure; health, education and the environment; and millennium were funded in the past.

Lancashire and National Results

The first National Lottery draw took place on 19th November 1994, and nowadays it is estimated that lottery participants raise £25 million each week for good causes. By mid-December 2008, a total of 309,805 projects had altogether received over £20.5 billion.

Table 1 details the number and value of national lottery awards by Lancashire authority. The figures reveal that a total of £311 million has been given to 5,589 projects (2% of total UK projects) in the Lancashire sub-region, equivalent to £215 per head. This compares with a North West average of £313 and a UK average of £336 per head.

Containing 2.4% of the UK's total population, Lancashire has so far received only 1.5% of the National Lottery "Good Causes" funding. Raising Lancashire's "share" of lottery funding to the national average could potentially generate millions of pounds of additional funds for the county per annum.

Lancashire's rather subdued performance is to a reasonable extent due to very large sums being spent in other areas across the country on substantial projects. For instance, Greenwich (home of the (External) former Millennium Dome ) received £600m of Millennium funding for the dome. Wembley National Stadium received £120 million, the Eden Project over £50 million whilst a number of national museums obtained substantial funds. In Lancashire, up to December 2008, only 16 projects had received funding in excess of £1 million, and no scheme has obtained more than £10 million.

At the Lancashire local authority level, Preston with £85.1 million has received by far the largest amount of lottery funding to date out of the 14 Lancashire authorities. This was well ahead of the £35.1 million received in Lancaster district which was in second place. In comparison, Ribble Valley, Fylde and Wyre have received less than £9 million of funding.

The national lottery funding information includes figures for individual grants to organisations by authority therefore analysis of these results allows a more detailed picture to surface. In Preston, where funding success has been most apparent, two of the largest awards were £1.85 million in 2004 for St Augustine's Redevelopment Trust (a community facility in central Preston) and over £3.6 million in 1999 for ICT provision for teachers and school librarians. The second award is the most significant because of the fact that the recipient organisation, Lancashire County Council, has its headquarters in Preston. The county council has been awarded other grants (some quite substantial) over the years that have been allocated to Preston. A number of these projects however, are for schemes that cover all the 12 local authorities in the county council area.

The Preston figure is also underpinned by a grant of just under £8 million for sports facilities for the University of Central Lancashire. This is by a quite a significant margin, the largest grant so far allocated to Lancashire.

This page was compiled by Matthew Whittaker .

All enquiries from the media should be sent to Corporate.Communications@lancashire.gov.uk .

Any other questions about the content of this page may be sent to EconInfo@lancashire.gov.uk .

For all enquiries about the county council's services , contact the Customer Service Centre on 0845 0530000 (01772 530000) or at Enquiries@css.lancscc.gov.uk .

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