The distribution of National Lottery largesse is a complicated matter. It depends to a fair extent on local authorities identifying those organisations and projects which need and merit additional funding and helping them to fill in their detailed applications. And then it is up to the National Lottery funding bodies to judge each application on a competitive basis and decide who should get what - and who should get nothing at all.

Somewhere in this process, Bradford seems not to be doing as well as it should. This is a relatively poor district with pressing needs, particularly in the fields of education and community cohesion. Yet it has been placed only at number 141 in the first quarterly calculation of the Lottery Dispersal Index.

Admittedly there are 295 authorities below us in a list in which only 95 gained above-average amounts. But Bradford surely deserves to be among that relatively select group. Instead the big money seems to have gone to the London boroughs, including Greenwich which received £3,216 per person compared with Bradford's paltry £151.

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport explains that imbalance in favour of the capital in terms of big projects which "are national projects for everyone". Bearing in mind that the Millennium Dome was a national project, it would perhaps seem wiser to spread more of the money around the country.

Bradford needs to work harder, through its new Lottery officer, to actively seek out projects, groups and organisations which are badly in need of additional funding and do more to help them to press their case with those who are in charge of the purse strings.