# Six months on from Olympics and still no refund of lottery cash

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2013/02/13/six-months-olympics-and-still-no-refund-lottery-cash/
- Published: 2013-02-13T10:06:12+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**The closing ceremony at the London Olympics took place six months ago, but still
there is no sign that the Government will make good its promised refund of lottery
cash to charities, according to the Directory of Social Change (DSC).**

The organisation's Big Lottery Refund campaign aims to secure £425 million of the
money taken from the Big Lottery Fund to pay for the London Olympics, and therefore
diverted from charitable good causes across the UK. It has issued a dummy invoice
to the Government for the outstanding sum marked "6 months overdue".

Over 3300 charities have now joined the Big Lottery Refund campaign.

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## £150m offered in 2014

DSC’s Chief Executive Debra Allcock Tyler said: "It is increasingly clear that hundreds
of millions in the Olympic budget remain unspent. There is a clear moral case for
the swift return of these funds to the lottery good causes which sacrificed to make
the Games a success. Depriving communities and vulnerable people of vital support
during these difficult times amounts to moral theft and cannot continue. The government
needs to pay back the money that was borrowed now."

Sports Minister Hugh Robertson recently stated that up to £150 million in lottery
cash taken for the Olympics could be returned to the lottery distributors in 2014.
DSC argues that this is not enough and not soon enough.

Supporters of the campaign are invited to download the 'overdue invoice' for £425
million and send it to the Prime Minister, Chancellor and Culture Secretary.

www.biglotteryrefund.org.uk

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