Discover How The Lottery Funds Britain’s Heritage

The English Electric Canberra was built in Belfast. A PR9 variant is being restored by The Ulster Aviation Society to go alongside their existing eleven aircraft in their hangar at Long Kesh. Eventually the Canberra is intended to be the focus of illustrated talks, guided tours and an educational DVD to inform people about this piece of Northern Irish history.

With such projects, financing is always a challenge, which is why the Aviation Society was delighted to receive a £50 000 grant from the Heritage Lottery fund.

The Heritage Lottery Fund was set up in 1994 and is charged with distributing the income from the UK lottery fund, particularly with regard to historical and cultural projects. Set up at the same time as the British National Lottery, the Fund has supported 33 900 projects across the country with a total of £4.4 billion.

Between the Sperrin Mountains and Londonderry in Northern Ireland lies the one hundred-kilometre area of the Faughan Valley. This is an area of ancient woodland set in a picturesque river valley. £1.2 million is to be allocated to the area by the Heritage Lottery Fund for use by a partnership of The Woodland Trust, The Rural Area Partnership In Derry (RAPID) and Derry City Council in improving access for the local population and restoring woodland habitats. Schemes being planned include walking festivals, rural crafts training, Heritage Weeks and woodland visits.

Brain Poots of the Woodland Trust says, “We are absolutely delighted to receive the backing of the Heritage Lottery Fund. With our collective efforts, we can make a positive and lasting contribution to the beautiful Faughan Valley; it’s good news for the landscape, for wildlife and for people.”

Many great causes are supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund using money from the British National Lottery. It is great news therefore that as a result of an increase in the income received by the UK lottery draw, the Heritage Lottery Funds budget has been increased by £25 million annually. This means the Fund’s budget is now £205 million per year.

It is clear the money from the UK lottery draw has been used to great effect by the Heritage Lottery Fund and so the increase in money available will help more libraries, museums, conservation projects and historical buildings in the years to come. With every weeks lottery draw the whole country wins.

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Discover The Chances Of Winning The Lottery

A winner of the UK lottery draw recently was Kevin Halstead who, despite winning £2.3 million, has decided to keep his job driving a bus for seventeen years. “I don’t want to pack my job in. I asked my boss for time off, a month maybe two, but I don’t want to cut myself off from my friends and I really enjoy my job,” he said. Mr Halstead will however buy his daughter a pony and is looking to move home back into the village of his birth.

Players of the British National Lottery must imagine what it would be like to win the top prize but what are the chances of winning in the same way as Mr Halstead?

Actually the odds are roughly the same as becoming an astronaut. Winning the jackpot has been calculated as 1 in 13 983 816 while being struck by lightning stands at 1 in 2.32 million. The mathematician Bill Hartson has worked out that a person could purchase £100 000 worth of tickets every time the jackpot rolls over and reduce the odds of winning to 1 in 14.

Everyone concentrates on the top prize but of course there are several other chances to win money available. On average one million players will win a prize of some description every week. Jackpot winners have to match all six numbers selected from 1 to 49 but prizes are also won with between five and three balls matched. The money available in these lower prizes ranges from £100 000 to £10 and the probability of winning drops from 1 in 2.3 million to 1 in 56.7.

A more efficient way of playing the UK lottery draw would be to join a group and play as a syndicate. Any money won by a member would be distributed among the group. This improves the chances of a member winning money considerably. One in four of the jackpots won tend to be collected by syndicates.

The Internet publicises several ways to improve the odds in the lottery but one of the most interesting is the Elottery system. The initial advantages are mathematical: for five pounds a week each member enters forty-four times into both the weekly draws (on Wednesday and Saturday) as a member of a syndicate of forty-nine players. Members actually only select five numbers each and the sixth number is selected in turn from each of the remaining forty-four. The probability of receiving a prize thus reduces to 1 in 13, which represents a 702% improvement.

There is no doubt the UK lottery draw is always going to be just that: a lottery. Schemes do exist to improve a player’s chances in the draw and syndicates do seem to be a smarter way to play the British National lottery.

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How Good Causes Benefit From The UK Lottery Draw

The entries will close for the UK National Lottery Awards very soon. The awards recognise the initiatives financed from the lottery funds and highlight that feature of the UK lottery draw that is so easily overlooked. Each week after the lottery draw, players either celebrate their success or complain about their failure. Yet every week there are other winners: the funds from the draw benefit various charities and good causes.

Television personality Sally Lindsey and a group of ladies from the Women’s Royal Voluntary service promoted the awards at the London Transport Museum. The choice of venue was deliberate, as both the WRVS and the museum have received funds from the British national lottery draw.

In the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire, St Davids cathedral had originally been constructed in 1181 on the site of an existing building. In its history, the church has experienced an earthquake, attacks from marauding soldiers and continual erosion from the elements. It has been a long struggle for survival. Recently, however, the situation has been helped a little following a grant from the National Lottery, which enabled the rebuilding of the north porch and the south cloister.

An ITV network television programme, The Peoples Millions, also distributes lottery funds. For example, Rowan Gate Primary School in Northamptonshire successfully applied to the programme for £50 000 to improve the school’s physiotherapy pool and open access to the pool for disabled children.

A more extensive initiative that has benefited from the UK lottery draw fund is a series of projects created to recognise the role servicemen played in the Second World War. One part of this, The Heroes Return, gave £17 million to enable veterans of the war to return to the sites of their campaigns. 58 veterans of the Royal Navy used this to return to Penang and Singapore.


Another part of the same scheme was the Their Past Your Future project which gave school children the chance to study the war and to actually meet the veterans. The Home Front Recall initiative also donated grants ranging from £500 to £20 000 to schemes commemorating the people and events of the Second World War.

The lottery was launched in 1994 and, since that time, around £25 million a week has been raised for charities. This means that a total of £24 billion has been raised to date.

It is clear, therefore, that in it’s 15 year life, the UK lottery draw has made a great impact on a wide section of British society. In particular, 28 per cent of the grants have been received by the most deprived areas of British society with tremendous results.

The lottery can too easily be seen purely in terms of winning and losing of money and yet there is no doubt it has effects that are far more positive.


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