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The milestones we plan to complete within the Business Plan 2023 to 2024.
Published: 4 April 2023
Last updated: 4 April 2023
This version was printed or saved on: 27 April 2024
Online version: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/about-us/guide/business-plan-and-budget-2023-to-2024
Overview: ## Introduction
As a world-leading regulator we are committed to making gambling fairer, safer and crime free. I am pleased to introduce this year’s business plan, which outlines how we will do this.
We will continue our mission to protect those most at risk, while delivering on our statutory obligations to the benefit of every one of the 22.5 million people in Great Britain who gamble each month.
As we enter the final year of our corporate strategy, we are looking at a globalised, innovative, and ever-shifting sector. As the market diversifies, operators need to be more competitive and innovative if they want to continue to grow in the British market.
While the market diversifies, the illegal online gambling sector also becomes more sophisticated. We will continue working to tackle this, making use of intelligence-led disruption and collaboration with a broad range of partners.
We also anticipate the Government's Gambling Act Review white paper will create an opportunity to build on the progress we have already made to protect players and the public; and to regulate and license the industry. We look forward to its publication.
To maximise the opportunities available in the year ahead, our work will be supported by robust governance (including the recruitment of six new Commissioners), financial controls, and performance management.
Underpinning it all are three guiding principles that provide focus and ambition for the year ahead. They are:
The Gambling Commission is here for everyone.
We have clear statutory objectives, and it is important we embrace them and keep our attention on those who may be at risk. And not just those at risk of harm, whether it be financial, physical, mental, or even to friends or family, but those at risk of disadvantage through unfair or illegal practices as well.
We will review the progress of the industry trial of sharing appropriate information through a single customer view (SCV) solution to identify consumers at high risk of harm and will consider next steps beyond the trial alongside Government and the industry. We will support operators as they work to share good practice on the use of algorithms to better detect the risk of harm to online consumers and meet the Commission's customer interaction requirements.
Putting people first refers not only to consumers but also our workforce. We will push forward with making the Commission a Great Place to Work for our people, building on last year’s accreditation. This will focus on effective leadership, clear direction, and a robust employee offer supported by a new Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.
The voice of the Commission is authoritative, trusted and impartial. Research and insight are fundamental to this.
This year, following extensive testing and research, we will launch the official Gambling Survey for Great Britain. One of the largest gambling participation and prevalence surveys in the world, this survey will explore gambling behaviours and experiences amongst the adult population.
Building on the work started through 'Path to Play' we have invested in our consumer research for the next three years, exploring the motivations and behaviours of all players across the different gambling pathways they have.
Excitingly, the year 2024 represents the thirtieth anniversary of the National Lottery. As custodians of this great national institution, we will continue to oversee the effective transition to the fourth licence and ensure the best possible outcomes for good causes while protecting players.
We want a compliant gambling industry and will work with the industry to achieve this. We will roll out account management with more effective and earlier engagement. Where operators do not make efforts to meet our standards, our compliance and enforcement work will ensure serious repercussions.
Gambling is a global tech industry and compliance is now a global imperative. That's why we will work even more closely with our international colleagues, maximising our use of a wide range of data, sharing insights and working collaboratively across borders.
I’m proud of what the Commission has achieved in the last year. The consequences for non-compliance have increased, our understanding of what drives consumers in their gambling has evolved and our commitment to collaboration has led to further opportunities to make gambling fairer, safer and crime free.
In the year ahead, guided by the principles previously detailed, I am confident that we will achieve even more.
As the regulator of gambling activity in Great Britain, our mission is to make gambling fairer and safer. We do that by licensing and regulating in the public interest and providing advice and guidance.
Our vision is for a fairer and safer gambling market where all consumers and the interests of the wider public are protected.
To achieve this we have five strategic objectives:
Read more details about strategic objective 1 in our corporate strategy.
Read more details about strategic objective 2 in our corporate strategy.
Read more details about strategic objective 3 in our corporate strategy.
Read more details about strategic objective 4 in our corporate strategy.
Read more details about strategic objective 5 in our corporate strategy.
This Business Plan and Budget sets out our plans and resources for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.
Our core regulatory activities will be supported by strategic deliverables that provide a clear focus for our work. This includes a readiness to publish our full programme of policy work in response the Gambling Act Review’s white paper. We will launch the initial phases of work designed to improve service level provision and maximise the use of available data at an industry and consumer-level.
This is the final business plan that will be published under our current three-year strategy. Work is underway to develop our next strategy for the year 2024 and beyond.
This year’s business plan details activity against each of our strategic objectives. Our priorities are as follows.
In addition to our core regulatory work under this strategic objective, we will:
In addition to our core regulatory work under this strategic objective, we will:
In addition to our core regulatory work under this strategic objective, we will:
Our strategic focus for this objective is to ensure a seamless and timely transition to the next licence, for the benefit of participants and good causes.
In addition to our core regulatory work under this strategic objective, we will:
Our policy and research teams provide key insight into emerging risks to help us ensure licensees are equipped to identify and reduce the likelihood of harm. Through the evolution of existing regulations or the introduction of new requirements on licensees, we will continue to ensure consumer protection is the bedrock of gambling in Great Britain.
We have been trialling a new methodology to collect official statistics on gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling. The Official Gambling Survey for Great Britain will launch this year and will provide more timely, relevant data to help us understand current trends, guide policy decisions, and demonstrate our impact. This will also include a new dataset measuring harms, including affected others for the first time.
We will monitor and enforce against activity that places children and vulnerable people at risk of harm. Our core compliance work will include thematic assessments, website reviews, security audits and review of personal licences. We will generally use the least intrusive regulatory tool to achieve compliance at the earliest opportunity and will ensure that any regulatory action is proportionate to the nature of the breach.
In addition to our core regulatory work, we will:
We will provide full details of our programme of work following publication of the Government's white paper in connection with the Review of the Gambling Act 2005 (opens in new tab).
To entail collaboration and sharing of appropriate information between operators to help identify and prevent potential gambling harms to high-risk customers.
A new Great Britain (GB) wide survey that will be draw upon a larger, more robust sample sizes and provide greater insight into gambling participation and the prevalence of problem gambling.
A three-year plan that will look to enhance our evidence base of behavioural patterns linked to gambling related harm. This will include areas outside our regulatory scope, but which will be of interest to the wider gambling research ecosystem.
We are exploring pilots around different ways to access and use operator data.
Gambling products are required to meet our technical standards, which ensure game rules and transactional information are easily accessible and visible to the consumer. To achieve fairness for consumers some products must be tested by an accredited test house before they are released to the market. General information such as terms and conditions must be accessible and easy to understand to enable informed consumer choice.
We require licensed operators to have appropriate policies and procedures for accepting and handling customer complaints in a timely, fair, open and transparent manner. They must also offer customers the ability to refer disputes free of charge to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service which meets the relevant ADR regulations. We actively monitor complaints data for key trends to respond to emerging issues and to inform ongoing policy.
A key focus this year will be to obtain greater insights on the issues that matter to consumers, including from our contact centre’s data, to identify consumer issues and investigate and address any related concerns.
Our internal Fair and Open Working Group is responsible for coordinating and enhancing our work in relation to the Fair and Open licensing objective. The group will help strengthen insights from research, evidence and data to ensure we take account of the interests of all consumers in our policy and regulatory operations.
In addition to our core regulatory work, we will:
We have commissioned Yonder Consulting to deliver our Consumer Voice research, which will help us engage a wide spectrum of gambling consumers and embed these learnings into our work.
We will undertake thematic compliance work to ensure consumers have access to fair and transparent terms and are treated fairly including where restrictions are imposed on withdrawals.
We will provide full details of our programme of work following publication of the Government's white paper in connection with the Review of the Gambling Act 2005.
Our focus will be to protect consumers and the wider public, and to raise standards in the gambling industry through targeted action. Our aims are to:
We will undertake intelligence-led disruption and enforcement initiatives relating to illegal gambling.
Our Sports Betting Intelligence Unit collect information and develop intelligence on betting related corruption. The unit also provides support to major sporting events by helping organisers manage the potential risks of match-fixing or other betting integrity related issues. We support many of the major sporting tournaments, including, where required, the Ashes, Rugby World Cup, Wimbledon, and the Women's Football World Cup in 2023.
From April, the collection of the Economic Crime Levy will become part of our core regulatory work. The Financial Service Act 2021 (opens in new tab) established the Gambling Commission as one of the Supervisory Authorities, along with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We estimate that around 60 (out of 186) casino licensees would be in scope for the Economic Crime Levy, which is based on United Kingdom (UK) revenue.
In addition to our core regulatory work, we will:
Alongside our ongoing intelligence-led disruption efforts, we will engage with relevant third parties and identify what further high impact interventions can be made to make it difficult to provide illegal gambling at scale in Great Britain. In doing so, we will take account of the outputs of the Government's Review of the Gambling Act 2005.
In addition to improving our evidence base on gambling related harms this work will seek to provide a greater understanding of the nature and impact of the illegal market.
In relation to the National Lottery, the Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Gambling Commission share three Statutory Duties:
In addition to our core regulatory work, we will:
The Commission is the United Kingdom's (UK) independent, statutory body responsible for awarding the licence to run the National Lottery. The third National Lottery licence is due to expire on 31 January 2024. The fourth National Lottery Licence has been formally awarded to Allwyn Entertainment UK ('Allwyn').
The Enabling Agreement, signed in September 2022, will assist both parties in transitioning between licences and provide the framework for implementation. Our strategic focus is to ensure a seamless and timely transition to the next licence, for the benefit of participants and good causes.
As an accredited Great Place to Work, we are committed to offering an effective and inclusive working environment to attract and retain talented staff. A focus for this year will be to embed our new Diversity and Inclusion Strategy within our core regulatory work. We will continue to develop our people and consider our resources to ensure we are a flexible and agile regulator with professional and engaged staff.
We remain dedicated to building partnerships with industry and consumer groups, regulatory bodies, such as the Institute of Regulation, and other jurisdictions to both learn from and share expertise on cross-cutting issues.
We will actively monitor market developments and evolve our regulatory approach to meet new challenges and opportunities head-on. We continue to develop our systems to ensure we remain an effective regulator that can provide authoritative data and insights on gambling and gambling regulation.
We will fulfil our statutory duty as advisor to government on issues around gambling, in particular supporting the Government's Review of the Gambling Act 2005 with formal advice.
In addition to our core regulatory work, we will:
To include the transition of our licensing and compliance functions towards an account management approach that improves end-to-end service user delivery.
Replacement of our finance and people services systems to build in efficiencies and enable the redeployment of resources to value-added work.
Our current three-year strategy ends 31 March 2024. We will commence scoping work on strategic priorities for 2024 and beyond.
A key pillar of our Great Place to Work agenda that outlines the Gambling Commission’s commitment and vision for diversity and inclusion, along with key objectives that will be pursued over a multi-year period.
Evolving technical capability and capacity to support our data aspirations, including future regulatory return enhancements and outputs from evidence gaps and priorities assessment.
Our new framework will ensure the Commission's offering is competitive amongst Birmingham-based Government agencies, helping us to attract and retain talented staff.
We will develop a robust and realistic financial savings target, which delivers appropriate savings that can be monitored and reported against regularly. There is a need to secure funding certainty to ensure we have the capacity and capability to continue to regulate effectively, make the necessary longer-term investments and deliver on the Government’s plans for gambling regulation.
Our budget for 2023 to 2024 will support the successful delivery of both our core regulatory activity and our known strategic deliverables. The surplus budget set does not include a costed provision for the Gambling Act white paper and development of our data strategy amongst other deliverables. As these become known to us in detail, approval will be sought from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to utilise our surplus and reserves (in line with policy) to fund future activities.
Our financial management arrangements reflect the principles set out within Managing Public Money and to ensure that we comply with accounting standards as set out in HM Treasury’s Financial Reporting Manual (FReM) and our Management Agreement with the DCMS.
We are budgeting to receive total income of £78.2 million, of which £26.4 million is fees charged to gambling operators. Total expenditure is budgeted at £76.3 million, with the surplus transferred to reserves.
| Income and expenditure | Gambling Regulation (£'million) |
The National Lottery (£'million) |
Gambling Commission Total (£'million) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fee income | 26.4m | 26.4m | |
| Other income | 0.5m | 0.5m | |
| Grant in Aid from the National Lottery Distribution Fund | 51.3m | 51.3m | |
| Total income | 26.9m | 51.3m | 78.2m |
| Operating expenditure | 25.1m | 51.3m | 76.4m |
| Surplus transferred to reserves | 1.8m | 0m | 1.8m |
The breakdown of our fee income (excluding The National Lottery, which is funded by grant-in-aid) is as follows.
| Sector | Amount (percentage) |
|---|---|
| Betting | 33% |
| Casino | 28% |
| Software and/or machines | 25% |
| Bingo | 4% |
| Lottery | 6% |
| Arcades | 4% |
| Channel income | Amount (percentage) |
|---|---|
| Remote | 69% |
| Non-remote | 31% |