Cambridgeshire will have a county-wide lottery starting soon

The jackpot will be £25,000.

Are you feeling lucky? Because the county council is planning to start a lottery in Cambridgeshire that would aim to raise funds for some good causes, take pressure off some council services and make the day of some fortunate individuals.

The local authority lottery – name yet to be decided – will launch “in the next four to six months”. The council says players will have a one-in-50 chance of winning a prize, “much higher than any of the national lotteries in England and Wales”, with a £25,000 jackpot.

The lottery tickets will be available online for £1 via a new website. Players will be able to select the cause they wish to support from those registered on the website, and 60p of the ticket costs goes to the charities.

This is more than double that given to communities by the National Lottery. The remaining 40p pays for admin and prizes.

A Cambridgeshire County Council spokesperson said: “Lotteries have long been a way of organisations raising income, and local charities based in Cambridgeshire will have the opportunity to sign up to benefit from the money raised.

“The county council takes no funding from the initiative.”

The lottery will be run in partnership with Gatherwell, specific to the county’s needs, the council says. It is underwritten by insurances to make it self-sustaining, but the council also says that more tickets sold means “the viability and sustainability of funding routes for our communities is achieved”.

“A Cambridgeshire lottery will create funding streams to organisations that support community resilience and enables charities to have a greater impact within their local area, which may relieve pressure and demand on council services,” a spokesperson continued. “By launching a local authority lottery, Cambridgeshire County Council can offer local charities a larger percentage of funding.”