National Lottery Community Fund: repurposing content for a UK-wide redesign
How I work: stakeholders, content design, and lessons learned
I’ve been writing examples of some of the work I’ve done, and this one’s about the National Lottery Community Fund project I completed last year.
It’s in a STAR answer - the format most interviewers expect for competency questions. Having it written down means I don’t forget the important bits when I’m actually in the conversation.
This one covers stakeholder management, content design, culture change and working across a complex multi-nation project. Sharing it as a reference for myself and in case it’s useful for anyone else doing the same thing.
Situation
The National Lottery Community Fund was redesigning their website. The existing content was inconsistent, and users were overwhelmed by the information and unsure which programme to apply to. Senior managers from different nations had their own priorities and ways of working. We needed to create a site that worked for applicants across the UK while respecting the differences in how funding worked in each nation.
Task
My job was to lead the content redevelopment for the funding programmes and make sure we launched with clear, consistent content that helped people decide whether to apply. That meant rewriting over 100 pages, but it also meant getting senior stakeholders from five nations to agree on shared standards and approaches, even though they’d previously worked independently and expected their requests to be actioned without question.
Action
After doing a small discovery on what worked well on other government and voluntary organisation sites, we used a template based on GOV.UK patterns to structure the funding programme pages. This gave us a consistent approach across all the content and helped stakeholders see how the information would work for users, not just what we were saying, but how we were saying it.
I audited the existing page content, deleted duplicate and unnecessary information where possible, and restructured the content to better tell the story of each programme so people could decide whether it was a good fit for them. I focused on plain language and on eliminating jargon to make the information more accessible.
We prototyped the pages early to test whether the structure and content actually worked for users. This meant we could validate the approach before committing to rewriting everything, and it provided evidence to show stakeholders that we were on the right track rather than asking them to trust us based on theory alone.
Throughout the work, I made sure our content decisions were grounded in evidence, user needs and best practice. I worked closely with user researchers and service designers to test assumptions and validate the approach. When tensions came up between nations or when stakeholders pushed for their own priorities, I used research findings to help senior managers see the trade-offs and focus on what would work best for applicants.
I ran workshops to start shifting how people thought about content and ways of working, creating shared standards and protocols that gave us a framework for making decisions together and working out where we actually needed consistency versus where we could flex.
Result
We launched the new site in October 2025 with redesigned content that was clearer and more consistent across all five nations. Senior managers who’d been protective of their own approaches started collaborating more effectively, and we began embedding content design practices that helped the organisation understand the value of user-centred design. The content now makes it easier for potential applicants to understand their options and decide whether to apply.
What I’d do differently
I’d start the culture change work around ways of working, roles and responsibilities much earlier in the project. We began that through workshops once we were already into the content redevelopment, but looking back, establishing those expectations upfront would have made some of the later tensions easier to navigate. Getting alignment on how we’d work together and who was accountable for which decisions before we started rewriting would have given us a stronger foundation when disagreements arose.
I’d also advocate for more show-and-tells during the alpha phase. The project felt like it was working in a silo at times, with very little awareness of what we were doing across the rest of the organisation. Regular show-and-tells would have built understanding earlier, allayed any fears, and potentially brought in useful perspectives we didn’t have in the room.
Questions you might ask
Can you give me a specific example of a tension between nations and how you navigated it?
How did you use prototyping and testing to validate your approach, and what did you learn that changed your content decisions?
With 100+ pages to rewrite, how did you prioritise what to tackle first?
When you ran workshops to establish shared standards, what resistance did you encounter, and how did you work through it?