Santa lottery on hold

A business man from North Wales wants to operate a one-off lottery to send sick children to Santa World in Sweden but unfortunately the Santa lottery is on hold due to expensive and time consuming bureaucracy.

Ray Hughes, a construction company owner from Ruabon in North Wales wants to send 50 sick and needy children to Santa World just before Christmas but he has discovered that he will need a license before he can run the Santa lottery. Mr Hughes says the trip could be off after he discovered that it will take up to eight weeks and hundreds of pounds to get the necessary licence to run the charity lottery.

Mr Hughes operated a similar scheme in the 1990’s with great success but this time red tape and bureaucracy seem to be putting the plans on hold. The concept of the Santa lottery is to sell 200,000 lottery tickets at £1 each with approximately £40,000 being used to book a plane from Manchester Airport and the remaining cash from the lottery being used to pay for the cost of catering for the sick or needy children and their carers. Any remaining lottery money would be given to local charities, benefitting even more needy people.

However the Gambling Commission requires anyone running a single lottery with proceeds over £20,000 to have an operating licence which will not only cost hundreds of pounds but will also take six to eight weeks to process, which would be too late to run the trip to Santa World. It seems silly that such a worthy charitable cause could be stopped from taking place due to red tape and regulations aimed at casinos and bingo halls.

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