IF slumping ticket sales are a sign that people are becoming disenchanted with the National Lottery, it turns out there is good reason for it in East Lancashire -- as we get so little of the money back.

New evidence today shows our region is among the biggest losers in Britain when it comes to gaining lottery money for good causes.

And, yet again, the unfair North-South divide emerges -- this time showing that it's areas in well-off London which have had the lion's share of lottery hand-outs.

Indeed, some of the capital's boroughs have been getting more than £3,000 more per head of population than East Lancashire's best-rewarded spot, Burnley, where the pay-back for good causes amounts to a measly £107.38 per person. And in several of our towns the amount received is less than half the national average.

It's just not fair -- especially if, as Hyndburn MP Greg Pope suggests, there is a huge gap between how much East Lancashire people spend on the lottery and how much they get back.

The government's Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which controls the lottery, says it will investigate the findings that show which areas are lottery winners and losers and that it intends to to make sure that funding is distributed equally across the country.

They should make haste.