A cycling charity has been accused of manipulating The People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway by encouraging its supporters to vote several times each for its entry.

The Big Lottery Fund announced on Wednesday that Sustrans had won the money with 42 per cent of the 286,000 votes cast.

The Times has learnt that a manager for Sustrans circulated an e-mail that encouraged people to vote as many times as possible.

The e-mail said: “Don’t forget to use ALL your votes. Use your online vote and then phone 0870 2424602 for every phone line that you have. Most people should have and use three votes or we won’t be doing ourselves justice.”

The fund confirmed that there was a loophole in the voting system that allowed people to vote several times. It said that this was not strictly against the rules, but was contrary to the spirit of the competition.

The website of the fund stated that people could vote “by phone or online” and did not mention that it was possible to cast multiple votes. The competition was the subject of several programmes on ITV.

Supporters of the losing bids said that the e-mail from Sustrans cast doubt on the legitimacy of the competition result. It was the first time that such a large sum of charity money had been allocated by a vote as opposed to a panel of experts weighing up all of the bids.

Matthew Taylor, MP for Truro & St Austell and a former chairman of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party, had supported a bid from the Eden Project in Cornwall to build the largest indoor oasis in the world. He said: “People will feel cheated to learn that someone from the winning organisation was encouraging people to make multiple votes. If we are going to award such a huge sum of money in this way, there is an obligation on the Big Lottery Fund to ensure that the principle of one person, one vote is rigorously enforced.”

Mr Taylor, who said that he had voted by e-mail only and did not realise that it was possible to vote several times, called on the fund to investigate the extent of the manipulation and consider whether it should abandon this method of allocating money.

“It is a good idea to involve the public in choosing who gets the money, but it needs to be done in a fair way rather than as TV entertainment.

“This competition smacks more of I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! rather than a proper process for deciding who should benefit from charitable money.”

The botanist David Bellamy supported a bid to create an urban park from a network of canals and limestone caverns in the Black Country. It was the runner-up, with 29 per cent of the vote.

Dr Bellamy said: “I cannot believe that England has sunk so low as this. It is just awful to hear that this kind of manipulation is going on in the name of charity.”

He had also voted only once and had not realised that there was a loophole in the competition.

Sustrans, which plans to use the money to create walking and cycling routes in 79 areas in Britain, said that the e-mail had not been an official communication.

A spokeswoman said: “In any organisation you are going to get someone sending out stuff to their friends. I’m sure all the other projects were doing exactly the same thing.”

A spokeswoman for the Big Lottery Fund said: “Unfortunately we are not the CIA and yes, people could have voted more than once.”

She said that the competition had been overseen by the Electoral Reform Services. Although the service ensured that each e-mail address and phone number was used only once, it did not check whether the same person was using multiple e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Cyclists have previously proved adept at winning competitions decided by telephone or internet voting. In 2005 the bicycle was voted the most significant invention since 1800 in an online competition run by the You and Yours programme on BBC Radio 4. Several cycling groups circulated e-mails to their membership lists urging them to vote and the bicycle won more than half of all of the votes cast. The runner-up, the transistor, won only 8 per cent of the votes.

In the running

Black Country Urban Park
A network of canals and caverns across the West Midlands. A new interpretation centre to explain how 400 million years of geology led to the Black Country becoming the “workshop of the world”

Sustrans’ Connect2
A UK-wide project to improve local travel by creating walking and cycling routes. The scheme involves building crossings over roads, rivers and railway lines. About six million people live within a mile of the proposed routes

Sherwood Forest
Project to more than double the size of the ancient oak forest and provide visitor facilities and 250km (150 miles) of walking, cycling and horse-riding routes

The Edge at the Eden Project, Cornwall
A new building hosting exhibitions to look at how people coped with change in the past. Water will be harvested from the roof. It will feature underground chambers for community groups working with artists, writers, scientists and musicians

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