Sir Richard Branson has teamed up with the People’s Postcode Lottery (PPL), a Dutch-owned group that runs charity lotteries, to bid for control of Camelot, the National Lottery operator, The Times has learnt.

The entrepreneur, who is acting in a philanthropic capacity rather than through Virgin Group, is understood to have set up a consortium with PPL and an unnamed investment fund to bid for a stake of 80 per cent in Camelot.

In April, four of Camelot’s five shareholders — Thales, Fujitsu, Cadbury and De La Rue — appointed Greenhill and Rothschild, the investment banks, to advise on a possible sale of their 20 per cent stakes. The intentions of Royal Mail, which owns the other 20 per cent, are uncertain.

The likely sale price is not known, although analysts predict that the 80 per cent stake could fetch between £200 million and £250 million.

If his bid is successful, Sir Richard, who has twice lost out to Camelot in the bidding for the National Lottery licence, is tipped to plough back the dividends currently paid to its five shareholders into charitable causes.

PPL is part of Novamedia, a charity lottery group founded by Boudewijn Poelmann, a Dutch entrepreneur who is a founding shareholder in City AM, the free financial newspaper, and a board director at Feyenoord, the Dutch football club.

Novamedia has operations in the Netherlands, Sweden and, since 2005, Britain and claims to have given more than €3.5 billion (£3.1 billion) to charities. PPL has recently launched a nationwide rollout across Britain, working with 5,000 local retailers.

PPL’s lotteries allow people to buy tickets based on their postcodes and a unique three-digit code. Tickets cost £2, of which 40p goes to charity, and all players in a winning postcode share the cash prize. It claims to hand out more than £35,000 in prizes every week, plus larger prize pots three times a year.

There are said to be as many as 20 prospective bidders for the Camelot stake, including Sugal & Damani, the Indian lottery operator. The deadline for offers is next Wednesday.

Neither Sir Richard or PPL would comment.

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