National Lottery operator is searching for this year’s most community minded shopkeepers
Allwyn, operator of The National Lottery, has begun its search for the most community-minded National Lottery shopkeepers in the UK. The nominations deadline for the two national and 16 regional awards for Local Retail Champions 2025 is midnight on 19 October.
Allwyn has also created a special Innovation Award category that will reward two National Lottery retailers for their ideas about how they would celebrate National Lottery Good Causes in their store. Self-entry for this award category will open later this month, with more details revealed in the coming weeks. The competition will also be supported through special in-store posters, which are new for this year and should have already been delivered to retailers.
Prizes available:
Two National Winners will each take home a £15k cash prize (customer nomination)
16 Regional Winners will each win a £5k cash prize (customer nomination)
Two Innovation Award winners will win £2.5k cash plus up to £2.5k to bring their idea to life in store (retailer self-entry)
Allwyn’s director of commercial partnerships and retail sales, Alison Acquaye-Acford, said: “Local Retail Champions is back and we’re excited to once again be celebrating National Lottery retailers making a massive difference in their communities. As we saw from last year’s almost-1,000 store nominations, retailers right around the UK are doing incredible things to support their communities every single day.
“We want to find even more great stories again this year and reward retailers for their dedication and goodwill. As an organisation, it’s really important to us that we recognise and celebrate the incredible impact local retailers have on the places we live, work and visit.”
There are a host of reasons why retailers could get their customers nominating them for one of the national and regional prizes. For example, Natalie and Martin Lightfoot received nominations for organising charity fundraising events and local litter-picking activities, while also providing a home delivery service for those in need. Meanwhile, Raj and Manish Suchak were nominated by their customers last year for a variety of community-focused work, including creating a safe space for those in need, donating generously to local food banks, providing food for a local school’s breakfast club and fundraising for the local cat shelter.
To nominate a local retailer, a customer must be 18 or over and should write up to 150 words before 19 October on how their local National Lottery retailer has made the community a better place. To find out more about the campaign or to nominate a National Lottery retailer, please visit www.TNLLocalRetailChampions.co.uk.
More information about how to enter the Innovation Awards competition, and further details about the award category, will be revealed in the coming weeks.
The initiative is being enabled by using part of Allwyn’s dedicated Social Value Fund, which is £1m that the company has committed to investing annually to help communities and high streets across the UK and Isle of Man to thrive.
Allwyn is once again partnering with Reach plc – the UK’s largest commercial news publisher – to promote the Local Retail Champions campaign across consumer-facing national and regional publications and websites.
