WIREDGOV

BIG Lottery Fund has announced a big response to its public consultation on future priorities for its Lottery good cause funding with close to 3,400 submissions from across the UK.

The Fund invited the public to have their say in its ‘Big thinking’ consultation in which people and organisations were asked for their views on how BIG’s £2 billion in funding over the next  six years should be allocated.

Many of the responses from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were from voluntary and community organisations.  The responses will now be carefully analysed and help shape the Fund’s strategic framework of funding priorities from 2009-2015.

The BIG Lottery Fund, the biggest of the Lottery good cause distributors, launched its consultation in November 2008 and it closed on 27 February 2009.

Sir Clive Booth, UK Chair of the Big Lottery Fund, said: “This has been a fantastic response and just goes to show the importance people have placed on our consultation exercise. We now have the task of sifting through every single response and incorporating what you’ve told us into the Fund’s strategic framework for the next six years.

“By the end of June we will be in a position to publish both the findings of the consultation and BIG’s new strategic plan that will be the foundation of BIG’s new funding programmes up to 2015.”

The Big thinking consultation gave people the chance to have their say through a series of national, regional and local face-to-face events and online channels. Central to the public consultation were ten ‘BIG Questions’ plus specific questions to reflect the individual priorities of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Further Information

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030

Textphone: 0845 6021 659Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• Full details on Big thinking is available online at http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/index/about-uk/big_thinking.htm.
• The Big Lottery Fund (BIG), the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out half the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
• BIG is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since June 2004. The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• In 2007, it was announced that £638 million of BIG’s funding between 2009-2012 will be transferred to the Olympic Lottery Distributor to support the London 2012 games. The Olympic transfer means that BIG will have less funding available to distribute between 2009-2015 than we would otherwise have. It is expected that BIG’s funding will be restored to near normal rates in the years after 2012.
• The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has made it clear that there will be no further transfers of Lottery funding to the London 2012 Olympics.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to good causes. As a result, over £22 billion has now been raised and more than 300,500 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
• About 70 per cent of the UK’s adult population regularly play the Lottery.