Guide to Supplying The National Lottery Community Fund

The Fund supports people and communities to prosper and thrive. We are the largest community funder in the UK and distribute funds raised through The National Lottery to communities across the UK. We are one of 12 distributors of National Lottery funding, and we are part of a wider National Lottery family.

Our funding has a positive impact and makes a difference to people’s lives. We support projects focused on things that matter, including economic prosperity, employment, young people, mental health, loneliness and helping the UK reach net zero by 2050.

National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £43 billion has been raised for good causes. National Lottery funding has been used to support over 635,000 projects - 255 projects per postcode area.

The Fund follows a set of key principles that underpin procurement which are aligned to the procurement rules and regulations, policies, and the Funds commitment to supporting communities to thrive and prosper.

Obtain value for money

We ensure competition is introduced by default and evaluated to obtain an optimum combination of whole lifecycle costs and quality.

Demonstrate good practice

The Fund’s procurement practices are aligned to Government Commercial Standards to meet expectations on planning, management, and execution of procurement activities.

Compliance with the public sector legislative requirement

The Fund’s procurement processes comply with legal and government policy requirements:

• open, fair, and transparent activity
• the form of competition is proportionate to the value and requirements to encourage new start-ups and small or medium enterprises (SME’s) by applying lean principles to procurement activity avoiding overly complex processes and minimising supplier costs
• comply with the data protection requirements
• implement social value as core evaluation criteria:
  • COVID-19 recovery: help local communities to manage and recover from the impact of COVID-19
  • tackling economic inequality: create new businesses, new jobs and new skills and Increase supply chain resilience and capacity
  • fighting climate change: effective stewardship of the environment
  • equal opportunity: reduce the disability employment gap and tackle workforce inequality
  • wellbeing: Improve health and wellbeing and improve community cohesion.

Become enablers

Raise the long-term standing of the procurement function across the Fund to become enablers and work closely with stakeholders.

Procurement plays a key role in the delivery of the Fund’s business objectives. Whilst Procurement sets procurement policy, in line with best practice for the organisation, we are also responsible for delivering best value procurement solutions for all goods and services required by the business.

The Procurement team manages the procurement process for all business requirements with a contract value meeting certain threshold. Our services range from supporting specification development to award of contract and providing post contract support. We also manage the procurement process for any requirements that are of a complex or high-risk nature.

For requirements with a contract value below thresholds, currently £30,000 including VAT, the Fund operates procurement self service, which means that Fund employees can undertake procurement activities, provided they follow the guidance and policy of the organisation.

Our vision for procurement is to engage, support and enable the Fund to deliver its purpose to support people and communities to thrive. We believe this can be achieved through fostering an inclusive, collaborative, innovative and strategic approach towards procurement, which is solution focused, commercially effective, delivers on the Fund’s goals, and evidenced deliverables on social value.

We will be an enabler across all procurement activity delivering an excellent service, adding value across delivery, and providing efficient operations. Our procurement activities will follow good practice, promote social value, tackle the climate emergency, and optimise value which align to the Fund’s principles and goals by being purposeful, impact orientated, relevant and value adding.

The Fund is committed to ensuring that our procurement processes and policy support public money spent in a way that is fair, equal and transparent.

All procurement activity, currently under £30,000 including VAT, can be undertaken without Procurement’s intervention provided that all of the Fund’s procurement policies and financial regulations are adhered to.

All procurement activity, currently over £30,000 including VAT, must be undertaken in conjunction with and administered by the Procurement Department.

Thresholds may change subject to government guidance.

• Government contracts finder
• Government tender finder
• Public contracts regulations - Procurement Act 2023
• The Public Services (Social Value) Act