Open Letter to Jeremy Hunt MP, Minister for the Department of Culture Media and Sport
22 November 2010
Dear Jeremy Hunt
I have a favour to ask of you in these slightly glum and anxious times. Could you cheer up the People of Frome by sending their Town Council a message to announce at the public meeting due to be held at Selwood Middle School at 7pm on Wednesday night (24 November 2010) concerning the future of the Cheese & Grain Community Centre. The message could go something like this:
"The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), with approval from the Cabinet and the National Lottery Operators Camelot, would like to change the structure of how the lottery proceeds are divided. In light of the cuts that are being made in local public services, we would like to ensure that extra development cash for job creating community and sustainability projects is available to local communities through the National Lotteries good causes fund. Instead of the Great & Good deciding whether your town may or may not receive some development cash, we will ensure that every town will be able to keep 24% of all the National Lottery takings within the town on a weekly and ongoing basis. We anticipate that ticket sales will rise when townspeople know that 24% of their lottery money will be re-circulated for the good causes that they have helped to choose through their local media and Town Council ..... congratulations Frome, you will be the first town to trial this 24% lottery 'keep-back scheme' and I trust that this will help you with the development of the Cheese & Grain that I know you are discussing tonight, and with other sustainability projects in the town.
The National Lottery proceeds are currently divided as follows
We are also looking at ideas for Camelot to spread the prize money around so that the top prize is capped at £7.5 million and, consequently, many more people will be winners of significant £10,000, £50,000, £100,000 and £250,000 prizes which will ripple into a greater spread of prize money spending across our local economies in addition to the 24% good causes receipts.
- 50p paid to winners in prizes;
- 28p given to good causes;
- 12p goes to the Government in Lottery duty;
- 5p paid to National Lottery retailers on all National Lottery tickets sold;
- and 5p retained by the operator to meet costs and returns to shareholders
- 40p paid to winners in prizes;
- 20p given to good causes nationally and overseas;
- 6p goes to the Government in Lottery duty;
- 5p paid to National Lottery retailers on all National Lottery tickets sold;
- and 5p retained by the operator to meet costs and returns to shareholders
- 24p stays in the locality from where the tickets were bought for local community and environmental projects.
We are also looking at ideas for Camelot to spread the prize money around so that the top prize is capped at £7.5 million and, consequently, many more people will be winners of significant £10,000, £50,000, £100,000 and £250,000 prizes which will ripple into a greater spread of prize money spending across our local economies in addition to the 24% good causes receipts.
By introducing this 'National Lottery keep-back scheme', we hope to save local communities time and energy from having to lobby and hassle either our DCMS department or the National Lotteries Board who will also benefit from these time and energy savings.
We will also keep to the first principles of the National Lottery of providing extra resources for community projects and will restrict its use for those purposes and not to supplement or replace existing government funding responsibilities in health, education, social services and transport. This money should be devoted to enhancing the quality of life in local communities.
The nation looks forward with interest to seeing the results of Frome's pilot 'National Lottery keep-back scheme' and trust that the community and local council will spend this money wisely."
DCMS Secretary, Jeremy Hunt MP
As the message is potentially huge for helping in the regeneration and sustainabilty all our local economies, you may wish to announce the Lotteries Changes yourself at Selwood School, though this is a cordial invitation and a suggestion from a private citizen (and cheeky speech writer!) and not a request from the local authority. If you cannot make it for this Wednesday, there are two other Frome windows you can climb into on the 1st and 7th of December when meetings for the Saxonvale Development and the future of the Cheese & Grain are taking place in the Cheese & Grain.
Yours sincerely
Tim Ashby
email:ashbydesigns@yahoo.co.uk
P.S.
There is another potential Frome project that you could help us with, and you could add the following paragraphs to the above message to get Frome people even more excited:
A Student Architect Competition
"The Government has been made aware that Frome has had no skills training facilities for over twenty years, and we would like to address this by helping in the funding and creation of a 'Creative Industries Apprenticeship College' in the Saxonvale Development.
David Cameron, George Osbourne, Vince Cable and Michael Gove are, together with related ministers, discussing with the CBI, the Self Employed Federation, the Landowners Association, the National Union of Farmers and other employment institutions , mechanisms for the sustainable funding of Apprenticeship Colleges.
Meanwhile, the DCMS would like to add its own creative input into the project to give Frome a 'Creative Industries Apprenticeship College':
Whilst we recognise that it is up to Frome to choose the developers and architects for the Saxonvale scheme as a whole, we would like to suggest that, for the design of your 'Creative Industries Apprenticeship College', we can organize a national competition amongst architect students to design the half a dozen different faculties for the college using, wherever possible, local materials and labour. The winning students will have one low carbon faculty building to design each, together with integrated open space for the subjects pursued in that building. They will work under the guidance of their tutors and the master architects, developers and planners for the Saxonvale site who will pay the winning students 60% of the going rate for architects, thereby giving Frome a good deal for being guinea pigs for exciting and innovative student design and giving the students an opportunity to design their first real building. Students will spend time in Frome and on Google Earth getting to know the feel of the locality and its residents.
We are also approaching the BBC to document (with local cameramen) and broadcast the 'student architect competition' so that Frome residents (and the Nation) can see examples of the design process in episode 1, can view the (shortlisted) designs - in association with local and national printed media - in episode 2 and can provide a phone-in vote for Frome Residents in episode 3 to choose the winning designs. The BBC can then re-visit Frome for one more episode a year later to see how the students' buildings are progressing, and for a final episode two years later when the building is finally in use.
These real life programmes could become a series involving other towns and could be called 'Student Architect Challenge'.
We think it wholly appropriate that student architects should be given the opportunity to design your town's and the country's new 'Creative Industries Apprenticeship Colleges' and we look forward with a measure of excitement to these projects rolling out in local communities in the years ahead."
P.P.S.
You can view this open letter alongside other Saxonvale and Cheese & Grain letters and documents at my temporary website at:
http://sustainablesaxonvalewebstartscom.WebStarts.com/lottery_letter.html
David Heath MP, Frome Town Council, the Local Media, Newsnight and local groups are also being made aware of this letter and temporary website.
P.P.P.S.
"It Could be You" - Camelot's slogan, can now be replaced with "It will be All of Us" with the local community 'keep-back scheme'
also
"Money is like muck - not good unless spread". (Francis Bacon, Essays XV, 1625)
This letter has been sent to attract National Lottery cash to Frome and other local communities on an ongoing basis for local community and sustainability projects. A 'Student Architect Competition' is also proposed.