According to Camelot there are many lotto winners out there who simply have not claimed their prize. A staggering £122.5 m in prizes has gone unclaimed in the last year according to Camelot which includes winners in the Euromillions, Lotto and scratchcards.
In an interesting article in Money it is claimed that around 3 percent of winnings go unclaimed annually. The reasons for people not claiming the prizes range from simply forgetting about the tickets to not wanting to claim the money as it was just too small. The biggest winnings been ignored are from raffle-style based draws which indicated most people in this category simply forget to check their tickets.
Many are not aware that automatically they are entered in the Lotto and Euromillions for which a winner is guaranteed. Believe it or not there are currently 15 prizes exceeding £50,000 which have yet to be claimed from the last six months of which 13 of them are via the raffle.
According to the rules players have 180 days to collect their prize and failure to do so afterwards results in it being siphoned to the National Lottery Good Causes Fund.