Leeds – Lottery Losers?

6.33.19pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 19th Jun 2003

Cllr Stewart Golton, Deputy Leader and Development Spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat Group on Leeds City Council has called for an investigation into why Leeds has performed so poorly in receiving grants from the National Lottery, compared to other major cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham.

New figures from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport show that the 8 Leeds Constituencies have received a total of £123,642,000 in National Lottery Grants up to the 3rd June 2003. This compares with total grants for the five core Manchester Constituencies of £478,410,000, for the ten core Birmingham Constituencies of £305,411,000 and grants of £179,546,000 for the five core Liverpool constituencies. Out of the 8 Leeds Constituencies 3 have received total grants of less than £7 million, Elmet, Leeds East and Morley & Rothwell. No constituencies in the Manchester or Liverpool blocks have received less than £8 million in Grants.

Cllr Golton said "These figures speak for themselves, the people of Leeds have been shortchanged by the National Lottery, and the Council has failed to ensure that the City has achieved the kind of funding which has been allocated to other major cities like Manchester, Birmingham & Liverpool. Why has Leeds done so badly, local people deserve to know. I will therefore be writing to the Chair of the Development Services Scrutiny Board asking that his Board institute an immediate inquiry into the level of funding received from the National Lottery, and the efforts the Council has made to attract National Lottery funding to the City."

"The shortfall is not such that grants of a few million to projects like the South Leeds Swimming Pool can redress the balance, we need a root and branch review of why local groups have not been successful in winning funding, and why Leeds lags behind in attracting grants for the kind of major new facilities which the Lottery has funded in other cities. Areas such as Morley and Rothwell, ranked at only 606 out of the 659 constituencies in the UK for the number of grants it has received deserve an explanation."