British Gambling Commission to launch four consultations this month

The consultations were mandated by the UK government’s white paper on gambling reforms.

UK.- The Gambling Commission has announced that this month it will open four consultations laid out in the government’s gambling white paper following its review of the 2005 Gambling Act. It will publish consultations on online game design, financial risk and vulnerability checks for online gambling, direct marketing and cross-selling and age verification at land-based gambling venues.

The regulator will also open two consultations not mandated by the gambling white paper, on the rules for personal management licences and the procedures for regulatory panels. It said it had chosen to run these consultations at the same time in accordance with its plan to gather consultations into windows instead of running them sporadically at random times through the year.

Executive director for research and policy, Tim Miller, said the consultations would last 12 weeks and conclude in October. The next set of consultations after this will launch in the autumn, when the regulator will consult on socially responsible inducements and gambling management tools. It plans to start pre-consultation discussions with major stakeholders on these issues in the current weeks.

Miller said: “The Gambling Commission’s work is of course also running alongside the work of government and the voluntary commitments of the gambling industry to implement the review.”

The most controversial of the areas for consultation may be the proposal for affordability checks, now referred to as financial risk checks. The gambling sector and horseracing stakeholders have raised concerns that such checks could push players to blackmarket operators in order to avoid sharing personal data.

However, UK gambling minister, Stuart Andrew, has claimed that only “3 per cent of accounts” will face detailed financial risk checks.

Gambling levy

Meanwhile, Miller said the Gambling Commission is supporting the UK government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as it makes its own progress with the planned statutory levy on gambling revenue to pay for research, education and treatment. He said the government will set the levy and decide where to direct the funding while the Gambling Commission follow its directions and collect and distribute the funds.

Miller noted that the levy will make the regulator’s LCCP RET list of approved RET organisations obsolete. He also said that Gambling Commission would take the new levy into consideration when choosing where to direct funds from its regulatory penalties.

Miller said: “Full implementation of the review will be a job of several years, especially when you include evaluating the impact of any changes. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to progress things as quickly as possible. We are determined to make progress at speed.”