Decision details

Members received the report of the Head of Acquisitions, Transformation and Regeneration detailing how the establishment of a local lottery could support community projects in the district, on the principle of raising money within the community for the community.  A lottery could be an alternative income stream for the Voluntary and Community Sector by directly benefitting from a percentage of lottery ticket sales when their cause was selected by lottery players, whilst at the same time supporting the Community Grant Scheme budget at a time of financial challenges.

Members gave consideration to two options for the delivery of a lottery scheme: establish an in-house lottery at an estimated set-up cost to the Council of £80 - £100k, with the financial risk if the lottery were not successful to be borne by the Council; or appoint an External Lottery Manager (ELM) at a set-up cost of approximately £10k, with the financial risk passed to the provider.  The preferred option was to use an ELM, as this mitigated the Council’s financial risk.

The expected set up cost of £10,000 would include, but not limited to, the appointment of an ELM, Gambling Commission Licence fee, Lotteries Council Membership and marketing costs.  On-going costs could be expected to be approximately £1,200 per annum, plus an element for marketing. There was no annual cost for the ELM as this would be covered by the administration element on ticket sales. It was expected that most of the officer time would be upfront in the set-up of the lottery.

Dependant on the model once set up, the primary role of the Council would be to complete monitoring, codes of practice and social responsibility requirements by the Gambling Commission, authorisation of payments and acceptance of new community and voluntary groups to the scheme, and marketing and promotion of the scheme. From research, the officer time commitment estimation was one day a month.

An analysis to assess the position for implementing a Rother Community Lottery was available at Appendix A to the report.

RECOMMENDED: That:

1)         a Rother Community Lottery be established;

AND

*RESOLVED: That:

1)         the income generated from the Rother Community Lottery central fund be apportioned to the Rother Community Grants Scheme; and

2)         the Head of Acquisitions, Transformation and Regeneration be granted delegated authority to:

a.         procure and appoint an External Lottery Manager to run the day-to-day operations of the lottery; and

b.         develop and complete the works as set out in this report as necessary for the completion of establishing a Rother Community Lottery.

*The RESOLVED parts of this minute are subject to the call-in procedure under Rule 16 of the Overview and Scrutiny Procedure Rules.