MP says £52m in lottery funding is ‘remarkable’ - The Worcester Observer

MP says £52m in lottery funding is ‘remarkable’

Worcester Editorial 2nd Jun, 2016 Updated: 19th Oct, 2016   0

WORCESTER’s MP Robin Walker has welcomed a Department for Culture Media and Sport report which reveals the city has benefited from more than £52million in lottery finding.

Since the National Lottery was started by John Major’s Government in 1995, Worcester has received a total of 735 grants worth a combined £52,635,194.

The most recent grant was £9,100 for a heritage project at New College Worcester, which Mr Walker visited recently to welcome HRH the Countess of Wessex.

The biggest grants in recent years have included £2million from Sport England for the new eight-lane swimming pool, half a million for Community Sports Partnership funding this year, nearly another half a million for the British Lung Foundation’s Sport programme and a quarter of a million from the Big Lottery Fund for the Asha Women’s Foundation.




A graph published with the statistics shows how Worcester has been winning more funding for heritage and sport over recent years.

Mr Walker hopes the trend continues as Worcester targets Heritage City status and is in the process of establishing an International Centre for Inclusive Sport.


“It really is remarkable that Worcester continues to win the lottery on such a regular basis,” he said.

“I don’t mean the famous big ticket wins we have all read about in recent years but the great investments we have seen in local charities, sporting activities and heritage.

“We rightly celebrate our world-class city and county and it is absolutely right that we should have attracted funding for so many good causes, but I am keen to see that it does not stop here,” he added.

Mr Walker pledged to help the city council, the civic society and others to support local bids as well as back sports teams to recognise their work in the community.

“One area where we seem to have gained relatively little in recent years is in arts funding and I have recently encouraged arts organisations in Worcester to contact the DCMS Select Committee about this as they have been doing an inquiry into how it is allocated around the UK,” he said.

“Worcester has wonderful theatre, music and arts and I hope we can do even better with this part of the lottery in future years.”

“It is great see how that investment in Worcester has continued year after year,” Mr Walker added.

Visit www.lottery.culture.gov.uk/AreaSummary for more information about grants to Worcester since 1995

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