The Office for Civil Society in the Cabinet Office has issued a consultation document about the new ‘policy directions’ that it is proposing to give the Big Lottery Fund. These have been criticised for changing the wording of the BLF’s additionality principle. Additionality – the principle that lottery funding should be additional to government spending, rather than a substitute for it – has been at the heart of the National Lottery since it was created in 1994.

The new version removes the line that ‘lottery funding is distinct from government funding’. The draft policy directions propose a new wording of “additionality and complementarity”: “The development of programmes and funding of projects should complement and add value to the plans of action and activity of other funders and parties working towards the fund’s goals, including government funding.”