The Directory of Social Change this morning stepped up its campaign for the return of National Lottery funding that it says was “stolen” from the sector to fund the Olympics, after the government announced today that the Games are set to launch with nearly £500m of budget unspent.
Figures from the government’s last quarterly economic report before the Games show that the overall funding package for the Games remains at £9.298bn with £476m of uncommitted contingency available.
However, the government’s statement makes no mention of what will happen to the contingency fund if it is not spent, nor of the National Lottery raid. And Olympics minister Hugh Robertson told Radio 4 today that "all being well we should be able to hand half a billion pounds back to the Treasury".
This morning, @BigLotteryRfnd was tweeting vociferously to spread its message across the Twittersphere. Tweets included:
“Is the refund on it's way? Quite possibly, the #Olympics is under budget > we need to demand this money back NOW!” and "@Jeremy_Hunt delighted you've exercised wonderful fiscal restraint- now how about that £425mil you 'borrowed' from charities back please?”
The campaign group also highlighted the fact that outgoing Charity Commission chair Dame Suzi Leather used her valedictory speech yesterday to warn that funding concerns were the biggest challenge facing civil society organisations.
“What’s the chances of these two breaking on the same morning?” the group tweeted. “Charities underfunded + charity refund.”
The DSC's policy chief Jay Kennedy told civilsociety.co.uk: "It will be an utter outrage – and verging on money laundering – if lottery revenues raided by the government to fund the Olympics go back to the Treasury.
"This money was taken away from supporting vulnerable people and communities across this country at a time when they needed it most. Government needs to keep its promises and do the right thing – any underspend must be used to refund the Lottery as soon as possible."
The £9.3bn Olympics budget, which included a £2bn contingency, was set in 2007 and was almost four times the estimated cost at the time of the London bid in 2005.
The DSC launched its campaign in April last year after becoming worried that the government would break its promise to return the money to the sector.
