The Big Lottery Fund has launched a consultation asking third sector organisations for their views on priority services to be targeted in the second round of funding in its BASIS programme.

The programme awards grants to organisations which support the third sector. In the first round, over £100 million was distributed, and BIG said it wants the second round to be more tightly focused to ensure it strengthens the areas that most need addressing.

Sanjay Dighe, chair of the Big Lottery Fund’s England Committee, said: “Since we launched the BASIS programme, Capacitybuilders, as well as national and local infrastructure organisations, have done a lot of work on needs assessment and identification of gaps.

“This means that we are in a much better position to identify clearly the services we want to fund and, in many cases, the organisations who can best provide them. We think that this is a better approach than opening up the programme to a large number of applications in a relatively unprescribed way. I urge the third sector to respond to the consultation. “

The consultation will run until 16 November. Visit www.biglotteryfund.org.uk