Schedule 3
Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [Lords]
4:15 pm
John Howell (Henley, Conservative)
I am looking for some reassurance about the process that will be used—how the money will be delivered and how the grants will be given—and whether that will be entrenched in the strategic plan. The reason for seeking such a reassurance is because the experiences that I and my constituents have had on specific projects funded by the Big Lottery Fund, have not been particularly happy ones. It has been a bureaucratic and long-winded process. I appreciate the need to be careful and to undertake the necessary diligence where public money is involved, but on one occasion the process got close to breaking the project on grounds that proved unfounded in the end. The Big Lottery Fund has a reputation for a bureaucratic approach, and I wonder whether, in the strategic plans for the process, we can see some step change in the way that it deals with the people to whom it gives money.