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Guidance

Guidance for submitting a proposal for Regulatory Settlement funding

Guidance around submitting a proposal for Regulatory Settlement funding including what Regulatory Settlement funds are and criteria for proposals.

What are Regulatory Settlement funds?

One possible outcome of regulatory action against an operator can be a payment in lieu of the financial penalty the Gambling Commission might otherwise impose for breach of a licence condition. This is known as a regulatory settlement. Regulatory Settlements are set in accordance with the Statement of Principles for Determining Financial Penalties.

The Commission publishes the details of those enforcement cases and regulatory settlements on our news page. For more information, see our approach to regulating the gambling industry.

Where a regulatory settlement includes a payment in lieu of a financial penalty, the funds are not paid to the consolidated fund, and must be applied for socially responsible purposes, which address gambling related harm or in some way promote one of the licensing objectives.

As part of the regulatory settlement process, the Commission reserves the power to approve where money goes to that has been paid in lieu of a financial penalty. The Commission does this by assessing proposals for socially responsible projects and then matching regulatory settlement funds to approved projects. Decisions on suitable projects are made by the Executive Team.

The Commission does not take possession of regulatory settlement funds at any time; the money is paid direct from the operator to the organisation delivering the approved project. If staged payments are agreed between the operator and the delivering organisation, and the operator withdraws from the UK market or becomes insolvent before all of the funds have been paid, the Commission will attempt to re-match the project with an alternative source of funds but cannot guarantee this will be possible.

Regulatory settlement funds are different to the annual financial Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) Research, Education and Treatment (RET) contributions that gambling operators must make as a condition of their licence to operate.

Typically, activities funded by regulatory settlements are kickstart projects. The Executive Team will want to know about how you will evaluate the impact of your project and your plans for sustaining the activity once regulatory settlement funding has ended.

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Our role with Regulatory Settlements
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