The conference, which took place at the Wickford Conference Centre, was attended by over 120 delegates from a mixture of local school, voluntary and community groups. It included presentations from Peter Wanless, and also senior representatives of the other Lottery distributor bodies (the Arts Council, Heritage Lottery Fund, and Sport England) on how best to maximise the chance of success when applying for Lottery funding.
Mark had been campaigning for some years with the Lottery bodies, and the Big Lottery Fund in particular, about the relatively low number of bids that were successful from the Rayleigh and Wickford constituency. As a result of this, Mark managed to persuade the Lottery funding bodies to lay on a major conference in his constituency; including a number of detailed presentations about how exactly the distributor funds work, and which criteria the voluntary and community groups would have to meet in order to qualify for Lottery funding.
Speaking following the well-attended event, Mark Francois said:
“I am grateful to Peter Wanless and his Eastern Regional Chairman, Sara Betsworrth, for all of their work in helping to organise this conference, and also to the other Lottery funding bodies who took the trouble to attend. I have come across considerable frustration among some of the voluntary and community groups over the last couple of years when they have been turned down for funding despite having done a lot of work to try and qualify. I saw this conference as a way to break out of the vicious circle, whereby the lottery bodies were bemoaning a lack of bids, and on the other hand, a lot of the voluntary and community groups had stopped bidding as they were bemoaning the lack of grants. Of course the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but I really hope that this conference will serve as something of a turning point in terms of Lottery funding coming into the area”.
Mark added:
“My constituents buy lottery tickets too, and therefore I think it is only right that they receive a fair crack of whip then when grants are handed out. I really hope that we will see an improvement in the future and that all of the effort that has been put in to this is therefore worthwhile”.