Hartlepool Residents Win Postcode Lottery Prizes
Last Updated: Wednesday 23rd September 2020, 09:54
A group of ten neighbours from Hartlepool collected a combined £300,000 thanks to a little Postcode Lottery good fortune. The lucky players, all of whom played in the postcode TS27 4BF, each landed a £30,000 reward in the Street Prize draw on Sunday 18th February.
With a sizeable five-figure sum heading into the bank account of each winner, attentions quickly turned to how the money would be spent. Graeme Stafford, one of the winning residents, has already started planning a number of home improvements, as well as a treat that his whole family will appreciate, but admitted that the news might take a bit of getting used to: "My wife Jill and I are still in shock. We're going to do up the garden and use the rest of the money to enjoy ourselves as a family and take our 13-year-old daughter away on holiday."
Neighbours Emma Wood and Jacqui Hunt were of a similar mindset: "My husband Michael and I are taking our two young kids to Florida in June, which we've been scrimping and saving for, so this is going to allow us to make it the holiday of a lifetime," Emma told reporters, while Jacqui said: “I'd like to take the kids on holiday and give my eldest son, who's at uni, a bit of cash to buy himself something."
Other residents had very different reasons to be thankful for their share of the windfall. Single mother-of-one, Bianche said: "This is fantastic, I can pay off a house loan that I've wanted to get rid of and that will make life so much easier.” She also plans to use the money to buy her nine-year-old daughter Trinity a brand new iPad. Treating loved ones is a route Douglas Adamson has also opted to take, revealing that his eight grandchildren would be spoiled rotten with the cash.
With a minimum of 30 percent of each ticket fee being donated to charity, the Postcode Lottery has raised over £175 million for good causes since its inception, something that remains important to a number of players. Alison Robson and Ernest Howlett certainly fall into that category, with each winner praising the efforts of the game: ”I signed up thinking it would be nice to win something, but also because I know about how much goes to charity. It's great that players are kept informed about what the money raised is helping to achieve," Alison revealed, while Ernest, a former mechanical engineer, was delighted that almost a third of every player’s entry fee was being donated to good causes, having spent most of his working life in hospitals and care homes.