British Gambling Commission launches new reporting service

The anonymous reporting service will allow people to report unlicensed gambling or suspicious activity.

UK.- The British Gambling Commission has launched an anonymous online service that people can use to report suspicious activity to the regulator. It said that people can use the “Tell us something in confidence” service to share information or suspicions about unlicensed gambling, match-fixing and betting integrity, underage gambling, money laundering or other criminal activity.

The service allows users to upload supporting materials including documents and photos. More information can be sent by email or mail. Users only need to share contact details if they want the regulator to contact them with regard to the case.

The Gambling Commission said the main aim of the service is to allow potential criminal activity to be reported, not to take complaints about licensees. These should go through the existing complaints process.

The regulator said: “The tell us something in confidence service can be used to provide any information that people believe relates to criminal activity under the Gambling Act 2005 or any other information that people may think could be useful to the Commission from a regulatory perspective.

New Gambling Commission consultations

Last week, the Gambling Commission opened its second round of consultations following the publication of the UK government’s gambling review white paper in April. It’s consulting on five areas for a period of 12 weeks, up until February 21, 2024.

The topics are socially responsible incentives, with proposals to ensure free bets and bonuses do not encourage excessive gambling, customer-led tools such as deposit limits and proposals to increase the transparency for customers in cases where licensees provide no protection in the event of insolvency.

The other two areas are the removal of current requirements for financial contributions to research and treatment bodies (such donations will become obsolete under the government’s proposed mandatory levy on gambling operators) and a proposal to switch the frequency of regulatory returns from annual to quarterly.