Is a lottery really the answer to funding local good causes?

How does a council go about finding money for good causes when budgets are tight and, thanks to Brexit, could get tighter still?

A three pipe problem and no mistake, or maybe in this non-smoking age a three vape one, either way its enough to give Sherlock a bit of a headache.

Thanks to the Gambling Act (2005) one solution could be the setting up of local lotteries to create a pot from which local charities and community groups could bid for funds. Stoke-on-Trent City Council is set to join Portsmouth City Council and Melton Borough Council in taking advantage of this opportunity.

This could be to the benefit of community groups that have been starved of funding since austerity began to bite and, to their credit, the council do not intend using this as a stealthy way of topping up their coffers.

Punters will pay their £1 for a ticket and have the chance to win the jackpot of £25,000, a car or a range of smaller prizes. Aside from running costs any money raised will go either into the prize pot or to local charities.

The Potto Lotto, an awful name, offers a better return to players with, if it follows the model used by Aylesbury District Council, 60% of the money raised going to good causes as opposed to just 28% of that raised by the national lottery reaching the same destination. There is also no chance of it foisting upon us Mystic Meg or those awful adverts featuring Billy Connolly.

Speaking to the Sentinel council leader Dave Follows said people would be 'more likely to pay a pound for a ticket if they can see where it is going to be spent'

Danny Flynn, chief executive of the YMCA and one of the sharper minds in the local charity sector expressed qualified enthusiasm for the scheme, telling the Sentinel his organisation would 'welcome any attempt to create more resources for local good causes', adding though that the thought 'it would only be part of the solution.'

I hate to be a killjoy but this scheme has all the signs of being something made up to look good from a distance that is rather less attractive when examined at close quarters.

For a start giving punters a list of seventy local charities to which they can donate part of their stake sounds like a good idea, until you think about how people go about making such choices. It is based on the premise that we always make rational decisions; and we just so don't.

When they are picking a charity most people, myself included, are more likely to be motivated by sentiment that common sense. Those good causes that feature kids or cute animals will do well, so will anything that being seen to support confers perceived virtue on the person signing the cheque.

Those charities that support difficult people or unfashionable causes, the homeless or people with mental illness for example will struggle, even though the level of need is equal if not sometimes greater.

In short punters will be offered an invidious choice that invites good people to be unintentionally cruel when they are trying to be kind.

My biggest issue though is that however carefully it is dressed up as a harmless flutter a lottery is still gambling and as such has the potential to cause serious problems. Something that was brought into focus this week by a rise in the number of people reporting an addiction to bingo.

I could at this point make a lot of lame jokes about grannies blowing their pensions down at the local Gala, but I won't, because addiction is no laughing matter. It is usually the outward symptom of a trauma the person experiencing it can't articulate or, maybe, even bring themselves to acknowledge.

Stoke is an impoverished city, there are a lot of people here who are just about keeping their head above water, to them winning £25,000 could look like a lifeline, even if trying to do so proves to be a brass ring they grab for endlessly, but never manage to reach.

I don't of course advocate banning gambling, everyone who buys a lottery ticket doesn't end up stood outside the bookies with three cigarettes on the go and all they own on some nag in the 3:30 at Kempton just as having a drink doesn't automatically lead to chronic alcoholism; but the council shouldn't add to the risk by endorsing it.

They should though be given credit for thinking out of the box when it comes to finding a solution to a problem that is going to get worse before it gets better, even if this time they're on the wrong track.