The National Lottery Awards

The National Lottery Awards are an annual search to find the UK's favourite Lottery-funded projects. Lottery players raise £25 million each week for Good Causes and the Awards are a great way to highlight how that funding has changed the UK for the better.

Now in their sixth year, the Awards aim to recognise the incredible difference that Lottery-funded projects - both large and small - have made to people, places and communities, all across the UK. They also celebrate the talent, hard work and amazing dedication of the people involved in running Lottery-funded projects.

Since The National Lottery began in 1994, over 317,000 grants have been awarded across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.

The Awards are in seven categories, reflecting the different types of projects that benefit from Lottery funding. The categories are:

• Best Arts Project
• Best Education Project
• Best Environment Project
• Best Health Project, in association with FemaleFirst.co.uk 
• Best Heritage Project
• Best Sports Project
• Best Voluntary/Charity Project, in association with Woman magazine

How do the Awards work?
All entries are reviewed independently by Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), a registered charity that works with donors, companies and charities to make the most of their donations. An independent judging panel will shortlist 10 projects in each category to go through to the semi-final round of public voting.

The semi-final round of public voting runs from 22 June - 10 July, with voting available online and via telephone.

The three projects in each category with the most votes will progress to the final round of public voting, which will run from 3 - 14 August.  The votes are reset to zero for this final round of public voting, and the project with the most votes in each category will be the winner.  The seven winning projects will receive a £2,000 cash prize to spend on their project.

All votes in both rounds are independently adjudicated by Electoral Reform Services (ERS).  The winners of each category will be announced on a special BBC1 show later in the year.