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Board minutes for 3 June 2025

Minutes of Advisory Board for Safer Gambling (ABSG)

3 June 2025.

Remote meeting via teams.

Members:

  • David Zendle (Interim Chair)
  • Virve Marionneau
  • Spencer Murch
  • Phillip Newall
  • Ulla Romild
  • Stephen Sharman.

In attendance: REDACTED

Apologies: None

1. Welcome, apologies and declarations of interest

The Chair welcomed members to the meeting. There were no apologies.

No new declarations of interest were raised.

One member noted that he has recently been successful in gaining a grant from the International Center for Responsible Gaming (opens in new tab) to research the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance responsible gambling (RG) strategies, focusing on the prevention and mitigation of gambling-related harms among online gamblers.

2. Minutes of last meeting for approval

The minutes of 18 March 2025 were shared and approved.

3. Actions update

All actions from the meeting on 18 March 2025 were noted as being completed.

4. Incoming Interim Chair Perspective for ABSG

The incoming Interim Chair provided their perspective on the group. The Interim Chair noted that they have been on the group for a couple of years which has been enjoyable and provided an understanding of the Commission and the challenges that it might face. This has also provided a good understanding of the skill sets that the members of the group provide. The intention is to continue to safeguard the bridging of advice from the experts within the group into the Commission and generally keep a lot of the current approach of the group the same as they have been. There is an awareness that there are huge amounts of expertise within the group which should not be undersold.

It was noted that the work that members are already doing is a good demonstration of the impact that the group has on the public good and healthy regulation. Colleagues in the Commission have commented on how helpful the work that the group is doing is. Involving the group in the creative or ideation stage of development works really well to enable a co-creation approach and this was identified as a good way to structure things. However, different ways of working can also be considered. As academics the group are generally used to working in 2 ways:

  1. design & creation
  2. identifying flaws and gaps (being critical).

It was noted that the Commission still needs a critical friend and of course benefits from the creative capacity of the group. Examples were given of the discovery opportunities in early development lifecycles where the group can steer and guide such as contributing to Regular Feed of Operator Core Data (ROCD).

But that there is a mutual desire to move away from Commission colleagues ‘talking at’ the group and then being met by a hail of criticism from group members. Instead, the Commission and the group should work together in a more collaborative and workshop style.

The introductory thoughts from the new Interim Chair were received well by the group.

5. Roadmap update

ABSG members were provided with a reminder of what evidence roadmaps are:

  1. Transparency around building the evidence base.
  2. Mapping priority research areas and core evidence goals to improve the evidence base used to inform regulation.
  3. Developed collaboratively.
  4. Provision of further direction to the Commission’s research programme and inform commissioning under the levy.

The roadmap has been developing over the last couple of months and is an extension of the evidence gaps and priorities work which will become part of evidence mapping and progress.

So far, Commission officials have curated a master list of questions from the ongoing evidence mapping and stakeholder engagement work they have been doing. They have used evidence gaps mapping scoring, business plan deliverables, cross theme research, GAR and importance to stakeholders to prioritise and have come up with a ‘long list’ of potential roadmap areas. It was acknowledged that this is not a perfect scoring system and that the list could be shorter, but it is still helping to identify areas of need.

Commission officials shared a draft re-worked version of the roadmap framework which no longer includes timeframes (instead just milestones and end goals). Commission officials were interested to hear from ABSG members whether some timeframes should be re-introduced.

The update was concluded with some key points:

  1. The roadmap needs to be helpful, not heavily prescriptive:
  • the number of milestones will vary depending on the roadmap
  • roadmaps will be starting from different levels of evidence.
  1. Milestones may not be exhaustive, but are likely to be illustrative of the key gaps in the Commission's evidence base.
  2. Some research may already be underway for some of the milestones.
  3. REDACTED.
  4. Consideration is being given to how the Commission will stay informed of research that is underway outside of the new levy system that would make progress against evidence gaps. Commission officials reached out to ABSG members for ideas around this.

REDACTED.

REDACTED.

Commission officials noted that it would be helpful to get reflections on anything mentioned in the update from ABSG members.

ABSG members provided their insights:

  1. Members found the update helpful and appreciated having sight of the long list. It was highlighted that some questions will be challenging in terms of finding the right kinds of evidence to answer them and it was suggested that it could be useful to get evidence experts to do a triage to identify how evidence might be identified.
  2. Commission officials agreed that could be helpful.

Although the Commission has access to some information that is not in the public domain which will help to answer some of the questions (for example, industry data, including land-based), there will be other areas that are not in the Commission domain. Therefore, a range of different approaches and people will need to be used to get to these.

REDACTED

  1. ABSG members asked Commission officials to make clear the parts of research that the Commission will be taking on when the list is formally published. This will enable external researchers to understand what gaps remain.
  2. ABSG members also suggested it would be useful to have at the very least broad timeframes on the roadmap alongside a prioritisation of the long list, so that external researchers can understand when to expect results and when they can provide some value to the identified gaps and priorities.
  3. Commission officials reported that they already have outline plans in place for the unlicensed gambling area. They acknowledged that this underscores the importance of the comments made by ABSG members, who stressed the need for transparency so that existing work can be built upon rather than duplicated.
  4. An ABSG member noted that while many of the questions on the list are subject to rapid change, the publication process for academic work is often slow. As a result, by the time findings are published, the work may have already been underway for some time. They again emphasised the importance of the Commission publishing updates on its website to ensure visibility of ongoing work.
  5. One member suggested that if ABSG officials are arranging sessions for researchers with forward-looking perspectives to present to GC colleagues, it could be valuable to invite Rob Heirene (opens in new tab). He was described as one of the most stimulating researchers in the field. His work involves collecting both self-reported and operator data, which he integrates using machine learning techniques.
  6. ABSG members offered to recommend other speakers if that would be useful.
  7. Commission officials welcomed the recommendation and offer.
  8. ABSG members recommended that the Commission provide some kind of incentive to encourage academics to fill any research gaps. Short of financial rewards, members suggested an email certificate or an email ‘thank you’ that could be added to a CV as academics are always looking for anything that can help to demonstrate the impact that their work has made.
  9. Commission officials noted that the annual update point will serve as an opportunity for the team to reflect on key learnings and to acknowledge those who have contributed to identifying gaps and shaping priorities.
  10. Commission officials also shared what had been done previously to recognise those that had contributed to the advice to Government on GAR and noted that the Commission has in the past sent letters to confirm a particular piece of research would be useful when they have been contacted by researchers about proposed research studies.
  11. ABSG members noted that if the Commission could develop a more formalised and proactive process of recognition that would be beneficial for academics to use to demonstrate impact. More targeted recognition that can translate into an impact statement would carry more weight than being cited or listed in a bibliography, especially when it is not in a peer-reviewed publication.
  12. ABSG members suggested that they could lead on the development of an academic engagement strategy for evidence gaps and priorities, working with Commission officials. They recommended that this would work best as a hybrid workshop with a combination of in-person attendance and remote attendance for ABSG members outside of the UK.
  13. Commission officials agreed that this could be a very useful exercise, and it was agreed that a suitable date for the workshop should be identified. Commission officials noted that the workshop would need to take place before the middle of July.

REDACTED.

6. REDACTED

REDACTED.

Commission officials asked ABSG members to share any additional thoughts or feedback on both the peer review and ethics process if they thought of anything they would like to add after the meeting.

7. GSGB Tender evaluation

ABSG members were informed that the contract for the current Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) survey is coming to an end in December 2025. Under procurement rules, the Commission needs to go out to tender to procure a new contract.

The contract will be for another 4 years.

REDACTED.

Commission officials are looking for a volunteer from ABSG to review the tender documents and to be part of the evaluation of potential suppliers. The team used an ABSG volunteer for the previous GSGB survey procurement and would very much like to have similar support again, if there is an interested member.

REDACTED.

The Interim Chair expressed an interest in sitting in on the process to gain a better understanding of how this works. Commission officials were happy to accommodate this request.

Another member also noted that they would be happy to help if required. However, as there could be a possibility of being part of the bidding process, a query was raised around conflicts of interest and how this would be managed by the Commission.

Commission officials noted that anyone from ABSG would be welcome to input into the development of the tender document, but that conflicts of interest would be more closely considered around the evaluation of bids.

REDACTED.

8. AOB

There was no other business.

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