Missing People Website

home > support us > corporate support > people's postcode lottery

People's Postcode Lottery

Missing People is hugely grateful to the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery – the money the players raise enables Missing People to provide support for missing children, vulnerable adults and families left in limbo.

The charities selected by the People’s Postcode Lottery receive 40p from every ticket sold. So far Missing People has received more £300,000 from players of the People’s Postcode Lottery. However, it’s not just funds the players raise for us. Missing People also benefits in other ways from the partnership with the People’s Postcode Lottery. We recently presented at the SNP party conference with the People’s Postcode Lottery to highlight the issue of ‘missing’ in Scotland.

One of the families that the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery are helping us to support Derek and Diane Burns, who have been searching for their son, also called Derek, for nearly 20 years. Derek went missing in March 1989. He left his home in West Calder, Scotland saying he was going to meet friends for a drink but did not return. It was later discovered that Derek had gone to Hemel Hempstead to see his girlfriend. However, he has not been heard from since.

Diane: "You couldn’t last feeling like when he first went. It still hurts. It still hurts that he’s not there. But you couldn’t say that you have that intense hurt as at first that you were worried that something’s happened. Now you sort of think, oh well, he’ll come home maybe one day, you know, or maybe well bump into him. I still don’t think he’d dead. I don’t think on him being dead, I can’t do that. I really have to have evidence of that. That’s maybe just silly but I think it keeps you going. It does keep you going."

Derek: "The way I am, if it’s a grey sky and you see a bit of blue, it’s a blue-sky day, you know. Otherwise you’re going down, you get morbid about it, you start inward looking, and then you start the blame game – what did I do wrong? – all this type of thing. And it’s none of that; it’s just one of those things that happens in life. So you have to keep looking and keep positive. And you know it’s hard sometimes, but to me that’s that only way you could do it. No, he’ll turn up sometime."

If you would like to play the People’s Postcode Lottery then just visit www.postcodelottery.co.uk or call Freefone 0808 10 9 10 10. Not only will you be helping to support Missing People and various other charities across the UK, you will have the chance to win up to £25,000 every week if you have the winning postcode.