The Community Lottery is making its way up the coast of Cumbria. ensuring there are smiles all around thanks to its rewarding methods.

Millom-based Karen Pattinson and Jenny Brumby are spreading the joy of winning the lottery along the Cumbrian coast with their monthly Community Lottery draw, with the latest first-prize winner receiving a jackpot of £3,500.

But it’s not just local people who win on this lottery - charities can also be involved, with around 50 charities in and around Millom already taking part. The Community Lottery, originally created as the Combe Community Lottery to raise money for charities between Waberthwaite and Broughton, is rolling up to Copeland due to demand, benefitting people and charities from Ravenglass to Parton.

“It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s also really great to be giving to so many people”, lottery founder, Karen, said. “I only suggested it as a joke to my husband when the local petrol station stopped selling lottery tickets, but he thought it was a brilliant idea, so I asked my friend Jenny if she’d help me with it, and it took off from there”.

The lottery works by people buying tickets on the Copeland Coastal Community Lottery website or Facebook page, and then have their name and lottery number entered into a generator. On the first day of each month at 7pm, Karen and Jenny go live on Facebook to announce the names of the lucky lottery winners.

A generator button is clicked by the previous month’s winner, which then produces the names of the first, second and third prize winners, being awarded £100 (third place), £250 (second place), and, most recently, £3,500 for the first place jackpot.

“It’s a rising jackpot, so the more tickets people buy, the higher the jackpot is”, Karen explained. However, it’s not only individuals that this lottery benefits, as charities can get involved for free, being awarded 20% of the ticket sales if the charity is picked by the generator. “It’s great because it benefits everyone. Even if people don’t win, the local area will still benefit, so everyone wins really”.

In the past 10 months, the lottery has given £25,000 to individuals, and almost £9,000 to charities. Previous charities who have been given money from the Community Lottery include; Haverigg Inshore Rescue, Millom Junior Football Club, and Millom War Memorial.

When asked why they are introducing the lottery throughout Copeland, Karen spoke of the demand for the Community Lottery in areas surrounding Sellafield. “We’ve had a few winners who work at Sellafield, and they told their friends who all spread the word as well, and now there’s such a high demand for the lottery around there”.

She laughed when describing the ever-increasing interest in the lottery, saying “people who live in Allerdale are asking for us to do it there now too - we can’t keep up!”

Tickets cost £2, and winners are drawn on the first day of each month at 7pm on Facebook. To get involved with the Copeland Coastal Community Lottery, go to https://copelandcoastalcommunitylottery.co.uk/, or the lottery’s Facebook page.

Photos of the first winners - Karen Pattinson with first winner David Hartley from Millom, and charity Haverigg Inshore Rescue.