A west Cumbrian council wants to set-up a community lottery to support local causes.

Allerdale council is due to discuss the proposal at Wednesday's executive meeting.

A report written by Brendan Carlin, the authority's head of programmes and projects, said the initiative would help bridge the gap with falling budgets.

He said: "As budget pressures continue to increase over the next few years, there will inevitably be an impact on the funding available for partnerships with local voluntary and community organisations in the medium term.

"In order to alleviate some of those budget pressures, a number of other councils have introduced a local lottery as a potential new source of income to provide funding to good causes."

The lottery would be online and would give charities and community groups the opportunity to sign-up, with players choosing to devolve the profits of their tickets to a specific cause.

It would cost the council around £8,300 to set it up and it wants to appoint Gatherwell Ltd as an external lottery manager.

The company has been identified by the council as a specialist and leading provider of local authority lottery schemes and is identified as low risk by the Gambling Commission.

Local authority lotteries have to deliver a minimum of 20% of proceeds to purposes for which the authority has the power to incur expenditure.

And Allerdale council proposes to deliver up to 60% of the lottery proceeds to good causes.

The report stated that Euromillions gives 22% of its proceeds to charities.

Mr Carlin said: "Until a few years ago, local authorities had not entered into this form of fundraising due to perceived risks to a council’s reputation, conflicts with antipoverty work, and concerns about the gambling aspects of such a service.

"However, things have moved on in the last few years and there is now a clear precedent set for local authorities to get involved in this kind of activity, as long as the marketing material is clear that it is principally a fundraising platform for local good causes."

The proposal is due to be discussed on Wednesday at Cockermouth Town Hall at 4pm.