Decision details

The Thanet Community Lotto was created in 2017 by Thanet District Council and was set up to support community projects in the local area. The Lotto operates on the principle of raising money within the community for the community. It empowers local good causes to raise money in a fun and effective way.

Thanet Community Lotto enables people to support the causes they care most about, helping good causes to connect with their supporters.

A ticket for the Thanet Community Lotto costs £1 per week and 60p will go directly to good causes in Thanet. Even better, Lotto players can choose which Thanet good cause gets 50p of the 60p. The Thanet Community Lotto helps over 80 local good causes to generate a regular income. The remaining 10p goes in a central pot for good causes. This has been accumulating with approximately £70,000 accumulated since the Lotto started.

During April 2024  the council's Cabinet and Corporate Management Team agreed  to set-up a grants programme using funds from the Thanet Community Lotto good causes pot. It was proposed that the Thanet Community Lotto Grants programme should be available to cover all wards of Thanet with a simple and accessible eligibility criteria for most not-for-profit organisations, subject to the normal council grant protocols.

The headline criteria was for the grants to deliver activities that support Pride in Place and delivered by ‘good causes’ in Thanet. The Fund covered all wards in Thanet and therefore available to apply to for Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise organisations and communities of Thanet. To be successful applicants had to be based in, and serve Thanet residents. The grants were up to a maximum of £2,000.

The grant programme was launched in September 2024 and closed in October. Through an open process, grant applications were invited and sent to the council for the Thanet Community Lotto Grants Fund. 63 applications were received and shortlisted using the published criteria, which were:-

• All sections of the application form have been fully completed with the relevant information. 
• Successful applicants must be based in and serve Thanet. The project must take place in Thanet. 
• Project aligned with ‘Pride in Place’ ethos.

Any project or organisation that did not achieve the criteria were automatically failed, not shortlisted and therefore not considered by the Lotto Grants Review Panel.

A panel of three staff members was set-up to review the bids against the key criteria, with the Corporate Directors forming the approval panel, reviewing the recommendations and providing sign-off of the grant awards. 

The ambition is that this could become an annual grant programme, depending on the funding gained through the Thanet Community Lotto. Learnings will be taken from the delivery of this round of funding to inform future years.

All shortlisted projects were scored and reviewed by the Lotto Grants Review Panel and approved by the Director’s Panel on 13 November 2024. 

Applications totalled   £113,140

Awarded projects total  £90,181.05

of which   £31,976.79 are youth projects

Breakdown of budget allocation

The following grants have been awarded as part of the Thanet Community Lotto Grant Fund, which includes some of the youth focussed projects being funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Youth Projects are shown in bold.

Following the published grant allocation process the Lotto Grant Review Panel and subsequently the Director’s Panel reached their decision to award the grants as stated above.

The Thanet Lotto Fund’s balance is £71,864.00 (as at 4/11/24) and all of this will be allocated to fund the Lotto Fund projects as stated above.

The Thanet Lotto Fund was oversubscribed and it was agreed to allocate £18,317.05 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, People and Skills budget to make up the shortfall.  The projects funded will be the youth focussed projects.  A separate Officer Decision Notice was published to document this separate officer decision.

The Director’s Panel confirmed their agreement to accept the recommendations of the Officer Grant Review Panel and award grants accordingly.

Both Panels were delighted to receive applications for a wide range of projects that enhance pride in place in the district and look forward to hearing the progress and impact they have had on our communities. Following project delivery, further information will be sent to the council as part of the monitoring process.

An alternative was to allocate the funding in a different way and not to create a grant funding programme for the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Sector with the monies allocated to good causes. This was rejected on the basis that the funding should be allocated to good causes and this was the fairest and most transparent way to allocate the funding to support as many projects across Thanet as possible.

A second alternative was to keep accumulating the funding and not allocate it to a grants programme. This was rejected on the basis that the money was provided into the Thanet Lotto Fund to support good causes in Thanet, and continuing to accumulate the funding did not support the ethos of the Lotto.