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 projects all across the UK and the Awards are a great way to highlight how that funding has changed the UK for the better.

Now in their seventh year, the Awards aim to recognise the incredible difference that Lottery-funded projects - both big 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 them.

Since The National Lottery began in 1994, over 340,000 grants have been given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.

The Awards have 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 iVillage.co.uk
• Best Heritage Project
• Best Sport Project
• Best Voluntary/Charity Project, in association with Woman magazine 

How do the Awards work?

An independent expert organisation - Neil Stewart Associates – reviewed all the entries and drew up a long list. An independent judging panel then shortlisted 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 1-18 June, 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 runs from 26 July-13 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.  Voting in both rounds is independently monitored and adjudicated by Electoral Reform Services.  The winning projects in each of the seven categories will receive national recognition on a BBC1 TV show later this year and, in addition to the Lottery funding they have already been awarded, they will receive a £2,000 cash prize to spend on their project.

Click here for details on last year’s winners, or here for full terms and conditions.