UKGC could legally reject licenses

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) is allowed to reject licenses to operators suitable for the permission.

UK.- Although companies correctly fulfilled the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) conditions to become gaming operators, the government regulator is legally approved to reject their proposals. The resolution was confirmed by the UK Court of Appeals (CA) during a lawsuit procedure introduced by Greene King against the UKGC.

The British company has begun a legal battle after the gaming regulator decided to reject its application for a bingo license. Greene King, UK’s largest pub retailer and brewer, argued that their project satisfied the regulators’ norms of gaming permissions. The UK Court of Appeal’s Civil Division, however, favoured the UKGC’s position last May 25, as Calvin Ayre reported.

“In the context of a proposal for full commercial bingo in a busy working pub, the [UKGC] Panel were able to draw upon their own expertise and experience of the relationship between gambling and alcohol – and that of the Commission’s officers – and the historic data and reports such as the Budd Report,” stated CA Lord Justice Gary Hickinbottom.

According to Calvin Ayre, the case will now be studied by the first-tier tribunal. The same decision has been previously ruled by the Upper Tribunal Judge Howard Levenson. The current UK Gambling Act gives power to the UKGC to reject gaming proposals that can “be harmful to the statutory licensing objectives.”