A syndicate of 20 West Suffolk College staff are celebrating their Lotto Millionaire Raffle win.

The Milburn Centre staff won after entering the Wednesday July 6 draw.

The 20-strong syndicate all work in the construction and building services department at the Bury St Edmunds college, with each taking home a £50,000 share of the win.

The group has been running for six years with the current syndicate leader and lecturer in construction Martin Cribb, managing the group lottery kitty for the past three.

Playing 20 Lucky Dip lines each draw, they have had a few little wins along the way but nothing like the £1million Millionaire Raffle pot.

A win that very nearly did not happen according to Mr Cribb, who said: “I buy our tickets every month keeping them at home and while I check the numbers, I tend to leave the raffle code checking until the end of the month.

“On this occasion when I took the tickets to be checked one of them became crumpled in the machine and the shopkeeper said we’d need to ring Camelot to verify the details of the ticket as the machine couldn’t read it.

“Thinking it was a bit of a faff I took it home and left it on the side in the kitchen.”

With the slightly battered ticket floating about for a few days Mr Cribb shudders to think what might have happened. A few days later his wife Sarah was popping to the shops and he asked her to take the ticket and see if the supermarket machine would have better luck.

He said: “I was at work when Sarah rang and said I needed to check the details of one of our raffle tickets online.

“I was a bit short with her, I was in the middle of finishing up some grouting at work and didn’t want it ruined, so didn’t call her back and check the details until my work was finished.

“Going back to my desk and logging onto national-lottery.co.uk I filled in the code and couldn’t believe what I was seeing, ‘£1million’.

“It was really difficult to keep calm at work and not say anything but I needed to be 100% sure. As soon as it was all confirmed I sent an email to the other 19 lucky winners.

“I didn’t tell them how much it was but gave them the log in details and suggested they check out our latest win.

“I can honestly say letting such a great bunch of people know that we’d won was just the best experience, it’s almost better than having £50,000 in my bank account.”

While most of the syndicate now know that they have won, a few are still away on summer holidays and are yet to discover the good news.

Plans for the windfall vary with many of the winners putting the money towards paying off their mortgage.

Also on the cards is a garden makeover, some investments for children and a raft of exciting experiences including skiing and a tour of China.

One winner is also planning to buy a long overdue engagement ring.

For every Lotto line played, players automatically receive a randomly-generated Lotto Millionaire Raffle entry, creating at least one guaranteed millionaire and 20 raffle winners of £20,000 in each draw.

In the St Edmundsbury borough there have been more than 535 individual National Lottery grants made to date, funding projects across the arts, sports, heritage, health, education, environment, charity and voluntary sectors.