Exeter mum celebrates £3m Lottery win

Jenn Burston from Exeter is looking forward to an amazing Christmas and New Year as she celebrates winning £3,062,272 in the Lotto Quadruple rollover draw on Wednesday 17 December. 

The unexpected present arrived after she played a chance Lucky Dip online.

Jenn who says she feels a ‘bit gobsmacked’ by the size of the win describes how she found out: “I always play EuroMillions online and saw the big Lotto rollover so decided to have a go.  On Wednesday night, I was on my way to bed and thought I’d look at my account to see if I’d won anything.  I logged in on my phone and it said I was a winner – my numbers were circled!  I thought hang on a minute, I think I’ve won £3,000 and took my phone to go and show my husband.

“All my husband Ian kept saying was, ‘are you sure it’s your ticket?’ so I tried to show him on the phone, but we were so excited and couldn’t really see the amount because it was so small, so we decided to get the iPad and log on with a bigger screen.  Once we realised it was £3million neither of us knew what to do next – so I called my mum and my husband called his dad, and by this time, it must have been after 11pm.”

After spending the next few hours looking at her phone rather than sleeping, Jenn received the email from The National Lottery to say she was a winner which confirmed the good news, although she carried on checking until the morning. 

Jenn, who has two young children, is going to get a bigger family house in the same area, as this was on her wish list for next year anyway because they were starting to outgrow their three bed semi, and they will also use some of the money to look after their close family.  Next year’s holiday was already booked to Turkey, but they may try and ‘squeeze in another one’.

Jenn is a part time administrator who only returned to work one month ago after maternity leave.  She has already been back to work as she says ‘you can’t let people down, can you?’  Ian is a service engineer and they have been married for two and a half years.

Jenn added: “I keep asking myself, just how do you spend that sort of money? I’m sure with £3million in the bank, the knack will come for us!”

Lotto can only roll four times.  As no one matched all six numbers in the draw on 17 December, the prize money was shared between the five winners in the next winning prize level (five plus bonus), each winner scooping over £3million.

The National Lottery changes the lives of winners like Jenn as well as communities across the UK – players raise, on average, over £33m for National Lottery-funded projects every week. In the Exeter area there has been over 1020 individual National Lottery grants made to date, funding projects across the arts, sports, heritage, health, education, environment, charity and voluntary sectors.

In Exeter, National Lottery funding has helped:

• Exeter City Football in the Community.  The group used the funding to purchase IT equipment, office furniture and kitchen equipment to enable them to provide an enhanced learning space for children.
• Living Options Devon.  This project provided an expanded and further reaching mini bus outreach service for hearing and visually impaired people in rurally isolated parts of North and Mid Devon.

For more information on National Lottery funding please visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk.

If this interested you why not read the article Making Your Own Luck!