Charities: Lotteries

(asked on 22nd February 2023) - View Source

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department will review the potential merits of raising charity lottery limits.


Answered by
Stuart Andrew Portrait
Stuart Andrew
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This question was answered on 2nd March 2023

I greatly appreciate the importance of society lotteries as a fundraising tool for charities and other organisations. Society lotteries are a vital source of funds for these organisations, raising around £400 million a year.

In 2020, we legislated to raise the annual sales limit for large society lotteries from £10 million to £50 million. Each charity with a society lottery licence is therefore able to sell up to £50 million of tickets per year. Most society lottery operators have sales well within this annual limit, meaning there is plenty of scope for them to continue to grow. After taking account of any prizes and administrative costs, charities and other good causes are able to retain a large percentage of this revenue, currently averaging 46% of total sales.

We reviewed the society lottery sales and prize limit increases 12 months after they were implemented, concluding that it was too soon to reach any firm view on the impact of these changes. The results of this review were published in March 2022, and found that no individually licensed society lottery has sales close to the £50 million limit, with only one umbrella operator benefitting from a further annual increase. We keep this under review with the Gambling Commission.

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