Navca chief Kevin Curley has challenged the lottery minister to make public some research his department did recently into the costs incurred by other countries in administering their national lotteries.

John Penrose MP recently wrote to all the lottery distributing bodies, demanding that they reduce their administration costs to 5 per cent of their turnover. Curley opposes this edict, warning that local charities and community groups will be disadvantaged as a result.

“A lot of what is called administrative costs is actually support provided to applicants,” Curley said. “Helping them bid for funding and helping them increase the impact of any grant they receive.

“Also, as smaller grants are proportionately more expensive to administer, we could see there being fewer but larger grants which will disadvantage local communities.”

Curley (pictured) added that when he met with Penrose recently, the minister said he had commissioned some work on benchmarking national lottery admin costs in other countries. “I’d like him to publish his findings,” he challenged.

BIG applications set to rise

The Big Lottery Fund is likely to experience a surge in demand for its grants in light of the forthcoming public spending cuts. Julie Nicholson, chief executive of the Croydon Resource Centre, told Civil Society that 41 out of 47 charities she knows who have sustained cuts to their statutory funding, plan to apply to BIG for replacement grants. “Competition will be fierce,” she says.