Lotteries Council calls for Government to ‘future-proof’ society lottery limits
Melanie May | 17 September 2018 | News
The Lotteries Council has called on the Government to ‘future-proof” new fundraising limits in its response to the society lotteries consultation.
In its response, the Council said that new fundraising limits should be set at a level that would work for the decade ahead, instead of needing to be changed again in a few years’ time.
On this basis, the Council back a new £100 million annual sales limit, a £10 million per draw sales limit and a £1 million top prize regardless of sales. The Council also backs changes to reduce the regulatory burden on small society lotteries by raising the sales thresholds for those lotteries to £40,000 per draw and £500,000 per year.
In regards to the 20% rule, the Council believes that new lotteries should be allowed to aggregate their returns to good causes over a three-year period to enable them to meet the statutory 20% to good causes, taking into account the start-up costs they face.
Lotteries Council Chair, Tony Vick, said:
“It has been around a decade since the last changes to the law on society lotteries. In that period the society lottery sector had seen strong growth, raising hundreds of millions for good causes across the country. It is a real fundraising success story.
“However the process of reviewing the law has taken a very long time, and over that period the current limits have increased the bureaucracy of fundraising this way for many of our member organisations. Change is well overdue but we need the new limits to work for the foreseeable future.”
Chair of the Lotteries Council Public Affairs Committee, Malcolm Fleming, added:
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“Good legislation is that which stands the test of time and we do not want to be in the position of having to ask Government to raise these limits again in a year or two. That is why The Lotteries Council urges the Minister, Tracey Crouch MP, to ‘future proof’ the limits, by setting them at a level which doesn’t just work for 2018, but which will still work over the years ahead.
“The Lotteries Council believes that an annual sales limit of £100 million, a per draw sales limit of £10 million and a maximum prize of £1 million, can stand the test of time and are also not over burdensome to lottery operators, one of the key objectives the Government set out when it published its consultation.”
The Institute of Fundraising also recently published its response to the consultation, having sought the views of its members. It also recommended raising the individual per draw sales limit to £10 million rather than £5 million, and the individual per draw maximum prize limit to £1m, rather than the proposed £500,000, with an increase in the per draw limit for small lotteries to £40,000.
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.