Lotto lunacy
July 17, 2019
<p>It’s 25 years since Mystic Meg first enticed the nation to part with its hard earned cash in the hope of winning the National Lottery jackpot (current chance of winning Lotto - <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background: #f8f9fa;" data-mce-mark="1">45,057,474 to 1). </span>The early assurances that Lottery funds would only ever be used to add value to mainstream public funding - and never to replace it - has long since been forgotten. There are so many lottery schemes on the go today that it’s hard to keep up with. Now plans are being laid to launch a local authority lottery scheme. Is there no end to it?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
Author: Improvement Service
A community lottery for Scottish local government
For a number of months, the Improvement Service has been facilitating discussions with councils on the potential to establish a local authority lottery scheme.
This is possible within current council powers and has been successfully pioneered by a growing number of local authorities in England.
In summary, council lotteries offer the potential to generate income for distribution to ‘good causes’ – normally via local community and voluntary groups. This can link to existing local mechanisms such as participatory budgeting.
A number of Scottish councils are already well advanced in developing a lottery scheme and are keen to explore the potential benefits of a collaborative management approach across a number (and potentially all) Scottish local authorities. This would be within the context of developing discrete area-based lotteries which distribute benefits locally.
We will be sending further information around the next stage of this work to all council chief executives over the next few weeks.