This will come as good news to people like Monica Hartwell, director of a small charity, Contact the Elderly, who has applied for lottery funding four times. She tells of one experience filling in a 25-page application form, spending two hours being interviewed on the telephone and then having to complete another form. Three of us worked extremely hard and every time we reapplied, the goalposts had moved. Smith, the culture secretary, accepts there is a problem. But he is confident of rapid reform.
Charities say the problems extend beyond complexity, however.
Even for those who make it over the application hurdles to the finishing post, the time on the winner's podium can be short. The BPF's funding will last only six months. It is quite a lot to achieve within such strict time restraints. We anticipated servicing 500 families, but in fact we reached 2,000. Now the funding has finished, we are left trying to provide the same service with less staff.