Big Lottery Fund statement

Big Lottery Fund statement in response to The Guardian article: ‘Gay activists call for review of National Lottery grants’

The Big Lottery Fund supports over 12,000 projects a year and will fund religious groups to carry out specific activities that deliver social outcomes evidenced by need. All activities funded by us must be as accessible and inclusive as possible.

We will not fund activities that are specifically religious or proselytising in nature or that are contrary to our own equalities policy. Our mission is to help communities and individuals most in need and it is our experience that many religious groups can have unique access to some of those that are hardest to reach.

We take seriously the assessment of applicants and monitoring of our grants but at the same time we need to do this proportionately, based on the size of grant. This is to ensure that funding is accessible to all, not over burdensome for those, often small groups, applying, whilst at the same time keeping the overheads of awarding grants down.

As well as monitoring grants throughout their term, we thoroughly investigate all allegations of funding being misused or breaches of our terms and conditions and take appropriate and necessary action to ensure the proper use of funds.