NICVA calls for devolved decision making on lottery

In a white paper published 3 July 2003, the government announced plans to “give the lottery back to the people”.

However NICVA believes that the lack of clarity in the ‘future of the lottery’ white paper, outlined by UK Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, “raises more questions than it answers ”.

The main issue of contention is devolved governance by the body that will be formed by the merger of the New Opportunities Fund and the Community Fund — a distributor which will hand out millions in funding.

NICVA's Director of Members Services, Paula Reynolds, said: “The voluntary and community sector here wants to see devolution of decision making to the local level — within Northern Ireland — to ensure that the development of programmes and allocation of funding are designed and delivered to meet local need ".

“Furthermore the lottery monies, allocated via whichever distributor, should be totally additional to government funding. They must not be used to cover costs which should be met by mainstream government funding. To ensure this, a significant amount of autonomy is required for programme development and decision making .”

Charities throughout Northern Ireland and the UK will be hit hard if good-causes funding is cut by 11% — as seems likely if London is successful with its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games.

Ms Reynolds added: “NICVA recognises that there is a need for a proportion of the overall monies to be committed to programmes which have a UK-wide remit. However, our sector and the money allocated to it must not be adversely affected by this. It should not be feasible for large sums of money to be drained out of the overall lottery money to go towards capital costs and large scale projects such as the Dome project in the past and potentially the Olympic Games .”

NICVA and its sister umbrella organisations believe that Tessa Jowell ducked the serious issue of devolved control for Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. The organisations renewed calls for control of cash to be distributed within their own areas by their own distribution boards or bodies.

NICVA, WCVA and the SCVO are united in their call for devolved control.