National Lottery players contributed £504 million towards good causes this year alone. Most of them went to London, North West England and Scotland. When measuring grants proportional to local authority populations, Orkney Islands in Scotland topped the list, with £76.83 won per capita so far this year.
This is according to a new study from NoDepositRewards.org, which analysed all 9,005 National Lottery grants awarded between January 1st and September 30th this year, as listed on UK Department for Culture, Media and Sports. Notably, the researchers noticed some projects reported in the media were missing from the government data, hence all the findings below are strictly based on the data available on the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sports website at the time of collection, on October 9th.
UK’s 10 most lottery-funded places per capita (Jan-Sep 2024)
| # | Local authority | Grant amount per capita (£) | Total grant amount (£) | Arts (£) | Charitable and Community including Health, Education and Environment (£) | Heritage (£) | Sport (£) |
| 1 | Orkney Islands | 76.73 | 1,689,629 | 38,754 | 0 | 736,640 | 914,235 |
| 2 | Blackburn with Darwen | 46.16 | 7,269,594 | 0 | 565,810 | 0 | 6,703,784 |
| 3 | Cardiff | 40.68 | 15,604,144 | 6,490,949 | 1,866,226 | 605,645 | 6,641,324 |
| 4 | Westminster | 40.54 | 8,573,679 | 3,930,913 | 3,078,403 | 1,362,588 | 201,775 |
| 5 | Charnwood | 34.32 | 6,452,071 | 0 | 1,407,406 | 0 | 5,044,665 |
| 6 | Richmond upon Thames | 30.36 | 5,935,043 | 125,140 | 800,010 | 5,009,893 | 0 |
| 7 | Belfast | 29.13 | 10,051,272 | 4,854,292 | 4,634,863 | 562,117 | 0 |
| 8 | Gwynedd | 26.70 | 3,182,422 | 504,751 | 336,724 | 1,056,802 | 1,284,145 |
| 9 | Stirling | 26.54 | 2,456,088 | 172,166 | 126,620 | 0 | 2,157,302 |
| 10 | Islington | 25.69 | 5,666,682 | 842,797 | 3,875,724 | 935,336 | 12,825 |
Orkney Islands constitute the most lottery-funded local authority in the UK. This pristine archipelago off the northeastern coast of mainland Scotland has a population of just 22,020. Each of them benefitted from £76.73 from the National Lottery this year. Of the total of £1.69 million allocated to the Orkney Islands this year, more than half went towards sports-related causes (£914,235 or £41.52 per capita). Heritage projects still attracted significant funding, worth £33.45 per capita. The remaining funds went towards arts.
From January until the end of September, the National Lottery sponsored 9,005 good causes nationwide, worth a total £504 million. 60% of these funds went towards charitable and community causes across the UK.
“Some less populated areas may need more funding than others due to scarcity of local sources,” said a spokesperson for NoDepositRewards.org.
“Across the UK, there are currently 36 grants available to apply for, some offering as much as ten million pounds, such as for heritage projects. There are also funding distributors who allocate necessary funding regionally or depending on the cause area, like Sport NI, Arts Council Wales, Creative Scotland, British Film Institute and many others. You can find them all on the Lottery Good Causes website.”
