The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is consulting on a proposal to re-look at the proportion of money available to the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) through the National Lottery. More details are available at http://www.culture.gov.uk/consultations/7070.aspx 

Current situation

As things stand, 28 pence in every pound spent on a Lotto ticket is allocated to ‘good causes’. 50% of that money is given to BIG to fund charitable, health, education or environment projects. The remaining money is split between the arts, sport and heritage (16.7% each). This means that BIG currently receives 14 pence for every pound spent on a Lotto ticket.

Government proposal

The government (DCMS) wishes to ‘restore the National Lottery to its original purpose’ and plans to increase the amount of money allocated to the arts, sport and heritage to 20% each. This would reduce the proportion of funding available to BIG from 50% to 40% of the money allocated to good causes.  DCMS plans to make this reduction in two stages:

•  On 1 April 2011 to reduce BIG’s allocation to 46% (and increase the arts, sport and heritage allocation to 18% each)
• On 1 April 2012 to reduce BIG’s allocation to 40% (and increase the arts, sport and heritage allocation to 20% each)

DCMS has committed to 100% of BIG funding being available to the voluntary sector.

Consultation

DCMS has published details of its plans and asked for interested parties to submit their views by 21 August 2010. It plans to use the submissions it receives to inform a draft Statutory Instrument on the National Lottery that it will put to parliament in the autumn. DCMS is particularly interested in ‘views on the proposal and the timing for its implementation, and how the change is likely to affect you or the sector/s you represent.’

Refugee Council and Refugee Action’s Basis Project response to the consultation

BIG funding is a key source of funding for many voluntary sector organisations including Refugee Community Organisations (RCOs). Refugee Council and Refugee Action’s Basis Project is planning to respond to the consultation to raise awareness of how the proposals might impact on RCOs and their work. We are not seeking to ‘represent’ the views of RCOs and are encouraging individual RCOs to respond to the consultation themselves and/or to feed comments to Basis if they would like to. Our response will be drawn from any comments we receive and our experience of supporting RCOs, particularly around securing and managing funds. Please send your thoughts to amandashah@refugee-action.org.uk  by 8 August 2010. 

Questions
DCMS has outlined a number of specific questions which it is seeking responses to. Here are the ones that most relate to Basis’ work with RCOs:

• How would the proposed change benefit/disadvantage RCOs?
• What impact would the changes have on the ability of RCOs to deliver previously identified priorities or projects?
• How will the proposed changes adversely/positively impact on RCOs (taking into account race, gender, disability, age, faith/belief, sexual orientation, gender identity and socioeconomic equality)? How could any impacts be avoided or mitigated?

Basis would also like to use its response to highlight to DCMS the valuable work that RCOs are currently doing with BIG funding.

• What examples are there of successful RCO projects using BIG funding (e.g. through the Awards for All grants)?