CONTENDERS for a £50m lottery pot for eco-projects, to be handed out after a television poll, have attacked the competition as “flawed” and “crazy”.

They claim that ITV1 has pushed the contest, The People’s £50m Lottery Giveaway, to the margins of the schedule after initially indicating that it would run a high-profile series of events in peak time.

Now they fear that the hand-out may be determined not by a mass vote, conferring a popular mandate, but by the ability of the eco-projects to mobilise their databases of supporters and local employees.

The competition starts tomorrow evening when the bushcraft expert Ray Mears will argue the case for the Edge, an extension to the Eden Project that will act as a showcase for ideas to improve the environment.

On Tuesday, Lorraine Kelly will appeal on behalf of Connect2, a plan by the charity Sustrans to provide walkways and cycle routes in 79 communities; on Wednesday, Brian Blessed will champion a scheme to expand Sherwood Forest; and on Thursday, Toyah Willcox will speak on behalf of a plan to make the Black Country an urban park.

All four projects have also listed other supporters on their websites, such as Alan Titchmarsh (Eden); Bill Bryson (Sustrans); David Bellamy (Black Country); and Jonas Armstrong, the actor who plays Robin Hood in the BBC series (Sherwood Forest).

Instead of a one-hour show in prime time, which could have attracted 5m viewers or more, the shows will start at 11.05pm and will run for just over 10 minutes each. The audience falls away dramatically after the end of the 10.30pm news.

“We were initially told that it would be a 60-minute programme to go out in peak time,” said Tim Smit, chief executive of the Eden Project. “But it has now turned out to be some tiny television programmes late at night.”

All four are urging their members and supporters to vote and have approached local employers to ask their workforces for their backing. For example, Microsoft, the software giant, has been enlisted by the Black Country urban park.

There are also worries that telephone voting could still be open to manipulation. The Big Lottery Fund, which is handing out the £50m prize, says it has a system to screen out callers from company switchboard numbers and “number withheld” lines, to ensure that no more than one vote is cast from an individual phone line. It will also use Electoral Reform Services to check voting.

On-line voting has begun ahead of the television launch but there have already been glitches, forcing The Big Lottery, the lottery distribution body which is awarding the £50m single prize, to set up helplines. Telephone voting will begin on Friday and premium rate calls will not be used.

The dissent is a blow for ITV, which was hoping this contest would mend its reputation after the telephone voting scandals of the past year.

There is also controversy about the winner-takes-all format. Some projects say they were told they could either compete for the £50m prize or go for another Big Lottery Fund scheme, which would award several winners up to £25m.

“We were later told that ITV wanted some of the more glamorous projects just to go for the £50m prize,” said Smit. “But if we now lose, we get nothing. It has been flawed from inception.”

John Grimshaw, chief executive of Sustrans, said: “The way that such a huge sum of money is being decided is quite crazy. It should, anyway, be the government which funds a project like this, as they do in other countries.”

Paddy Tipping, Labour MP for Sherwood, and Adrian Bailey, Labour MP for West Bromwich, have put down motions in the Commons saying it would not be right if Eden or Sustrans won since both have already received multi-million-pound awards from the millennium lottery.

The result will be declared during the 10.30pm ITV news on December 12.

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