A COMMUNITY lottery for Dorset will be looked at again in the New Year.

Dorset Council had been investigating the idea as a way of financially supporting community organisations prior to the pandemic.

Cabinet member Cllr Ray Bryan revealed the possible re-launch of the project in response to a public question from Helen Sumbler to this week’s Dorset Council meeting.

She suggested that funding from residents willing to make donations, or take part in a local lottery, could be used to help with meeting the costs of the county’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy.

Cllr Bryan, whose portfolio includes climate, said the original community lottery had been due to launch in June 2020.

“Unfortunately, due to the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, and the additional responsibilities our small community groups took on during this time, and the covid community response work the Communities and Partnerships team needed to pick up, we took the hard decision that this would not be an appropriate time to launch a project which would add an additional burden to our groups and took the decision to pause the launch. A decision will be taken in the New Year as to when will be an appropriate time to restart the project,” he said.

Cllr Bryan said that for typical council operated lotteries 60p of every £1 ticket sold went to the good causes which sold the tickets with 20p from every ticket going into a central fund which is used for wide community causes.  He said it would be possible for some or all of this central fund to be used on projects which have a climate and ecological sustainability theme.