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Introduction

This research monitor uses National Lottery grants information released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sports. Figures for the number and value of Lottery funded projects are presented for all local authorities in the Lancashire County Council area and for the two unitary authorities of Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool. The table also has the numbers for the Lancashire NUTS-2 area (includes Lancashire County Council and the two unitaries) and for the North West and the UK.

Please note that our Economic Performance area profile contains a table that details Lottery funding. It contains additional details for areas not listed here.

The 2006 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 results. The per-head figures involve adding financial values together from different years, but no adjustments are made for inflation. This approach is therefore rather basic and should be viewed with some caution.

This article goes on to mention 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 proceeds of the National Lottery support the arts, heritage, sport, charities and community and voluntary groups as well as projects concerned with health, education and the environment.

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 the end of June 2008, a total of 297,850 projects had together received just over £20 billion.

Table 1 details the number and value of National Lottery awards by Lancashire authority. The figures reveal that a total of £306 million has been given to 5,385 projects (2% of total UK projects) in the Lancashire sub-region, equivalent to £211 per head. This compares with a North West average of £303 and a UK average of £339 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 may in part be the result of a lack of large funding approvals for substantial projects. Up to June 2008, only 14 Lancashire projects had received funding in excess of £1 million, of which eight were allocated to Preston, two to Fylde and one each in Burnley, Pendle, Lancaster and Blackpool.

At the Lancashire local authority level, Preston with £81.6 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 £34.6 million received in Lancaster district which was in second place. In comparison, Ribble Valley and Wyre have both received less than £8 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.

For further details, or if you have any ideas for improving the content of this article, please contact:
Bryan Moulding
Tel 01772 534172
Email Bryan.Moulding@lancashire.gov.uk