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User engagement statement

Introduction

The Gambling Commission is committed to producing high quality, timely and relevant statistics in line with the  Code of Practice for Statistics (opens new tab).

Our statistics support the delivery of the Commission’s Corporate Strategy, and specifically the area of focus around using data and analytics to make gambling regulation more effective. We believe that better evidence, driven by more effective use of data will lead to better regulation, which in turn will lead to better outcomes for consumers, the public and licensees.

It is important to have good user engagement with our statistics. It helps us to better understand our users and their needs. It ensures that we are responsive to emerging needs and helps us to better identify gaps in our evidence base, which we can feed directly into our evidence gaps and priorities. It also enables us to shape new and existing statistical products ensuring they are relevant and fit for user purpose, delivering products with maximum impact and value.

Our commitment

This statement sets out our plans for ongoing dialogue between producers, users and potential users of our official statistics, but is also relevant to our wider research and data analysis.

We will be clear about the production and release of our statistics by:

  • publishing a release calendar for our official statistics
  • publishing our official statistics on the date pre-announced
  • publishing methodology and/or technical reports alongside our statistics
  • publishing our revisions and corrections policy for official statistics.

We will meet the needs of our users by:

  • continuing to develop knowledge of our users, potential users and their needs
  • providing statistics in an accessible way for users
  • communicating our statistics and analyses in a timely and effective way, using a variety of channels
  • providing a variety of opportunities for users to give us their views about our statistics
  • responding quickly and accurately to questions and enquiries from our users.

Who uses our statistics?

It is important to understand who our users are, how they use our statistics and what questions they are trying to answer, so that our statistics best fit their intended uses.

Users of our statistics come from a diverse range of backgrounds and want to be able to access our statistics in a range of different ways. We know for example some users would prefer a summary of headline findings whereas others prefer to be able to download raw data to do their own analysis.

Our statistics are used internally by colleagues across the whole Commission. Outside of the Commission our users include:

  • industry – operators and trade bodies
  • researchers, academics and students
  • Government including regional and local government
  • media
  • NHS and Public Health Authorities
  • charities focused on gambling & prevention and treatment
  • consumers (people who gamble)
  • wider public
  • other regulators (UK and International).

We will continue to develop our knowledge of who our users are and extend our reach to new users by:

  • inviting comments and feedback through our statistics webpages
  • encouraging users to register to join our statistics user group for the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB)
  • presenting our statistics at relevant conferences, webinars and events

We also host an annual ‘Evidence’ conference for our users. In 2025, around 200 stakeholders attended the event representing a range of different backgrounds.

Understanding our users needs

It is important to understand how our statistics are being used, to help maximise public value and ensure users understand our statistics in order to make sound and informed judgements based on them .

In the development of the GSGB, we established three stakeholder engagement groups to ensure there was a two way dialogue between us and our users as the new survey was developed. As the survey now has official statistics status, the groups are being migrated into our GSGB Statistics User Group.

To join the GSGB Statistics User Group please register your interest and to provide feedback or get in touch about the GSGB please complete our feedback form.

We also have a dedicated email address for any queries about our statistics: statistics@gamblingcommission.gov.uk.

We also regularly monitor the usage of our statistics through reviewing web analytics, we have released some information about web usage of our GSGB statistics in the year following the publication of the first annual report. This helps us understand the relative popularity of our various outputs and formats, as well as allowing us to assess the impact of trialling new methods to engage with users.

In addition to monitoring usage, we review how our statistics are quoted within other publications, such as the media and research. We hope to engage with some of the organisations that have used our statistics, by encouraging them to submit abstracts to present at our evidence conference, to join our GSGB statistics user group, or just to provide feedback about what they found useful or what they think could be improved. For example, we have previously received feedback from a user in academia about the questions we ask on our Young People and Gambling survey. As a result of their feedback we were able to incorporate a change in wording to one of the questions asked on the survey.

On an ongoing basis we also contact organisations where statistics have been misrepresented, and we publish a log of these requested corrections on our website. Our first publication was in April 2025, and we will update it on a quarterly basis.

Data from some of our official statistics has been published to the UK Data Service, as outlined on our Availability of research data on the UK Data Service page. We will review how many times data is downloaded from the UK Data Service and which organisations are downloading it, so we can build knowledge of these users. In the first month of the GSGB being available in the UKDS, it has been downloaded nearly 50 times.

We also regularly review the queries we receive in relation to our statistics. This includes parliamentary questions (PQs), press queries, freedom of information (FOI) requests and mailbox queries. Where we receive regular requests, we will consider whether this information should be shared more widely within our publications or products.

How we engage with our users

We want our user engagement to be a two way dialogue which is ongoing and collaborative to help us maximise the value of our statistics for our users.

We will continue to use a variety of communication methods to meet user needs including webinars, podcasts, the Commission’s e-bulletin newsletter (fortnightly) and our annual spring conference to share information with users about our official statistics.

The GSGB statistics user group will also form a key part of our user engagement and communications strategies.

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Last updated: 24 July 2025

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