FOR some, it’s a Saturday night ritual that’s a load of balls, but for others the National Lottery really has made a difference.
New research conducted by Solitaired.com, a free, browser-based card game platform with more than 500 games available to play, shows that the act of picking some numbers and crossing fingers has helped raise nearly £28 million for good causes in the South East so far this year.
And since it was launched by Noel Edmonds kicking some footballs into a goal back in 1994, the National Lottery has sponsored £3,319,173,736-worth of projects in the South East.
In our neck of the woods, Windsor and Maidenhead has come top with £147,776,166 of funding.
Reading is next, receiving £59,207,434 for a variety of projects. Neighbouring West Berkshire received £36,020,936.
The National Lottery has sent £30,693,944 to Wokingham borough, while Basingstoke and Deane has received £24,788,485.
The borough that received the least amount of funding is Bracknell Forest, which has been awarded. £18,914,469
There are eight lottery-funded grants currently available for eligible entities in England, with a maximum funding amount of £100,000. Another seven grants are available nationwide for film- and heritage-related projects, some of which have no maximum funding limit.
The funding goes to projects in education, environment, health, arts and sport.
Heritage is the sector in the South East that benefitted the most from National Lottery grants over the past 28 years. The latest official government data suggests that this area in the South East received a total of £874,110,189.
Sport is the second most lottery-funded sector, with £780,048,131-worth of sponsorship since 1994.
Arts causes follow at quite a distance behind, benefitting from £536,003,891 over the past three decades.
All these funds come from a proportion of ticket sales, as well as any unclaimed prizes within 180 days.
Rushmoor district, just down the road from Camberley, currently hosts one millionaire who has not yet claimed their prize. They have until Wednesday, October 26 to do so. Between October and December, there were £38m fewer claims than the previous quarter, which was added as returns to good causes.
The latest national survey carried out by the Gambling Commission suggests that 43% of adults took part in some form of gambling activity in the four weeks prior to the survey. This constitutes 4% less than before the pandemic. In the year ending March 31, more than £8bn-worth of tickets have been sold, of which almost a quarter went to various good causes across the UK.
A spokesperson for Solitaired.com said: “If you ever lost a winning lottery ticket, there is comfort in knowing that your prize would have gone to a good cause, quite possibly in your own town.”
