Retailers have the chance to win one of two £15,000 top prizes as part of Allwyn’s Local Retail Champions 2025 campaign. The National Lottery operator is seeking to crown the two most community-minded retailers in the UK and will award a further 16 £5,000 cash prizes for Regional Winners. In order to be in with a chance of winning, retailers must receive a customer nomination. 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.
Allwyn is once again partnering with commercial news publisher Reach plc to promote the Local Retail Champions campaign across consumer-facing national and regional publications and websites. It will also be supported through special in-store posters, which are new for this year.
In addition, there is a self-entry Innovation Award for retailers who can come up with the best ideas about how they would celebrate National Lottery Good Causes in their store. Two winners will win £2,500 cash, plus up to £2,500 to bring their idea to life in store. Entries for the Innovation Award will open later this month, with further details yet to be revealed.
The 2024 Local Retail Champions campaign saw Natalie and Martin Lightfoot of Londis Solo Convenience in Glasgow and Raj and Manish Suchak of Coldean Convenience in Brighton crowned the two national award winners. Along with the 16 Regional Winners, they fended off competition from almost 1,000 other National Lottery retailers from across the UK, who had all been nominated by their customers for going above and beyond for their communities.
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. Meanwhile, 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.
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 that is committed to positively contributing to society in how we go about our business, and with retailers helping to raise £30m every week for National Lottery Good Causes by selling tickets to players, 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.”
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.
