The Community & Partnerships Manager introduced the report which provided an update on the launch and progress of the Swale Community Lottery and future plans for growth of the scheme.  She reported that there had been a positive response from charities and good causes and since publishing the report over 50 good causes were now registered and officers would continue to promote the scheme. 

The Chair invited Members to make comments, and these included:

·         A lot of work had gone into setting up the scheme with apparent little return;

·         could the money have been better spent elsewhere?;

·         officers and Members needed to explore why the public were not engaged with the lottery and how tickets sales could be increased;

·         there were many charities that had signed-up but were not receiving any money from this lottery;

·         the levels of money were so small that did not consider it was helping anybody;

·         the Council should have ‘capped’ the lottery for the first year to a certain amount of charities just to get it rolling;

·         could the list of charities that had signed-up for the lottery be circulated to all Members to assist with signposting etc.;

·         the Communication’s Team could send a poster out to all the charities involved detailing the community lottery with a QR code for people to get involved;

·         how much money was the Council out of pocket from this project?;

·         could learn from the Faversham Town Council Community Lottery which worked;

·         from a business point of view did not think it was worthwhile;

·         there was a typographical error on the Appendix I, List of current Good Causes registered, Sheppey FM 92.2 were on the list twice;

·         the issue currently was there were not enough tickets sold;

·         the Council had no power over which good causes residents wished to support;

·         Members had a responsibility to promote the project; and

·         needed to ask the Parish and Town Councils to feed details of the project via their media chat groups to reach a wider audience.

In response, the Community & Partnerships Manager reported that £4,049.00 had been raised since the lottery went live.  The figures set out in Appendix II on page 24 of the report, were based on a projected outcome of the tickets being brought under the current scheme and the £10,639.20 was a predicted amount on the tickets currently being bought.  Some of the smaller charities would benefit greatly from a small amount of money, it did not need to be large sums of money.  There was a new member of staff who would be working directly with the good causes and how they were promoting it.  The Council grant for the project of £10,800 was used to set-up the project and included: the extra staff time; the original licence; and the gambling fee.  The only ongoing costs would be: £352 for the lottery licence; and £410 for the Lottery Council which would be generated by the ticket sales.

The Head of Housing & Communities explained that it was early days and the Council’s £10,000 investment was to set-up the community lottery, and now it was up and running it should not require further investment.  Officers were working with the Council’s Communications Team and organisations that had signed-up to the lottery to promote the scheme further. 

Resolved:

(1)     That the report be noted.