Report by Director of Resources and Deputy Chief Executive (attached)

The Committee considered a report by the Director of Resources and Deputy Chief Executive (circulated previously) regarding the formation of a community lottery for North Devon.

The Director of Resources and Deputy Chief Executive advised that Carol O’Neil, Lottery Manager of Gatherwell was present to answer any questions. He highlighted the following:

·       A local lottery for North Devon would offer a valuable new income stream for local voluntary and community organisations.

·       Local Authority lotteries have to deliver a minimum of 20% of proceeds to purposes for which the authority has the power to incur expenditure.  It was proposed to deliver up to 60% of the Lottery proceeds to good causes.

·       The three options for consideration by the Committee as outlined in paragraph 4.4 of the report.   Option 3 was recommended to the Committee for approval.

·       It was proposed that rather than allocating officer time and significant cost to setting up and managing an in-house lottery, an External Lottery Manager (ELM) was used to oversee the operations of the local lottery. There would be some in-house resources required to liaise with the external provider to get the lottery up and running.

·       There were very few ELM’s in the marketplace and, as indicated, Gatherwell were specialists in delivering local authority lotteries. It was therefore proposed to utilise Gatherwell as an ELM for the lottery, initially for a one-year, with an option to extend to a second year.

·       Gatherwell now provided this service for around 140 local authorities, including district, metropolitan, county and unitary councils, and their remit was to increase funding to good causes. No other quotes have been obtained from lottery providers as there does not appear to be any other company that can facilitate this type of local authority lottery.

·       One of our neighbouring local authorities, Teignbridge District Council, recently set up their community lottery and as part of their research considered other ELM’s as detailed in paragraph 4.8 of the report.

·       The Council would need to define eligibility criteria against which applications for good causes wishing to join the lottery would be assessed. The proposed criteria was detailed in paragraphs 4.10, 4.11 and 4.12 of the report.

·       Once the criteria have been agreed, Gatherwell would set up a new website and manage the publicity and recruitment of good causes to the platform. Experience of running 140 such lotteries suggested that there was no upper limit on the number of good causes and the most successful lotteries support the largest numbers of causes.

·       Local authorities would have significant input into the branding, marketing and launch of the lottery, even to the extent of naming the lottery, however ongoing marketing need only incur modest expenditure, with good causes largely doing this work themselves.

·       Ticket sales would all be administered by the ELM and participants would be expected to set up a monthly direct debit. No tickets were sold in shops, offices or on the street. The ELM would also be responsible for payment of prizes and distribution of proceeds to good  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32