NICVA welcomes directions to Big Lottery

In his letter to the Permanent Secretary, Dr Aideen McGinley, Seamus McAleavey expresses NICVA's views of the Policy Directions and Interim Orders to the Big Lottery Fund.

In his letter he said, "NICVA greatly appreciated the opportunity to comment on the Directions before they were formally issued to the Big Lottery Fund. Indeed, we welcome the significant efforts the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport are making to include our sector in the consultation on the direction of National Lottery funding at all stages."

"NICVA is pleased that the Policy Directions align very closely with our own responses and particularly on the issue of poverty and disadvantage."

"It is of great value that the Department has chosen to create underlying principles for the Big Lottery Fund of “the need to address disadvantage, promote tolerance and social exclusion” and “contribute to the reduction of poverty”."

"We are also of the opinion that given the context of the UK-wide consultation, the new outcomes are as Northern Ireland focused as they could be. This represents considerable progress to meet the particular needs of the people here."

"NICVA looks forward to seeing how the Big Lottery Fund will design and deliver its programmes to achieve these outcomes and we will work closely with BLF to assist in any way we can the achievement of those outcomes. "

The Big Lottery Fund announce details of the programmes it will develop in the near future, perhaps as soon as later this year or early in 2006.

Draft Policy Directions