The Health Lottery assets of the NHS Lottery were purchased in 2007 by Altala Group Ltd, a company run by Ian Milligan, a former employee of Camelot Group, the operators of the UK National Lottery. Altala went into administration in 2009, shortly before it was due to be granted its gambling licence, and was purchased by Health Lottery Ltd. After winning the licence, the Health Lottery was sold in February 2011 to Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell group. The Health Lottery launched in September 2011. Until the summer of 2018, The Health Lottery had operated 51 society lotteries across Great Britain. This structure
Gambling in the United Kingdom lottery until the Government established one, however. Other countrywide lotteries do exist, but work by dividing the prizes and stakes strictly on a geographical basis into small areas and thus technically not becoming a national lottery. The Gambling Commission called the Health Lottery in 2010 "a very fine line" and insisted it would only be legal if split into at least 31 separate, identifiable schemes so as not to become "a "de facto" National Lottery". The United Kingdom's state-franchised lottery is known as the National Lottery, which was set up under government licence in 1993. Several games are run under