Bacta Annual Convention - Tim Miller speech
28 November 2024Speech by Tim Miller
This speech was delivered by executive director Tim Miller at the British Amusement Catering Trade Association (BACTA) Annual Convention on 28 November 2024.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Hello everyone, thank you for that introduction John, it’s great to be here today to have the chance to speak to so many of our licensees. Whilst it’s fair to say that the relationship has been bumpy at times I’ve certainly felt that over the last year it has strengthened. Indeed it’s worth reflecting that it was actually a family entertainment centre that once gave me my greatest Dad achievement. That moment when your daughter looks at you like you’re a Marvel superhero because you managed to snare a Paw Patrol toy in a crane grabber, or as my girls like to call it ‘a non-complex cat D gaming machine’. A wonderful moment… although several years on you then realise that you peaked too soon as a parent and it’s all been disappointment since then! But to be clear, I’m not blaming Bacta nor its membership for that!
But coming back to our working relationship - the Commission takes collaboration very seriously and we want to work with you to make gambling safer, fairer and crime free. So today, I’ll start by discussing our approach to that and how we want to take that forward with you. Being able to build a more collaborative relationship though requires more than words of course and so I’ll then spend a bit of time talking about the Commission’s Compliance work, and share some reflections on our recent work with the Adult Gaming Centre (AGC) sector specifically. I’m also pleased to say that I’m joined here today by our Director of Compliance, Dan Whitlam too. Dan had a wealth of experience in industry and the third sector before joining the Commission so please do feel free to say hello and if there are any challenging questions I’m sure he’ll be delighted if I pass them over to him! I’ll round my time out with a little update on the Commission’s work to implement the Gambling Act Review as well, building upon what you have already heard from Sarah Fox. It’s been a busy year politically of course and whilst over recent months the implementation of the Gambling Act Review may have been a bit quieter on the publications side of things, the work to implement it has continued. So I will give you a snapshot of how that is progressing as well. And, as always, if we have time for questions I’ll be very happy to take them.
But first, back to how working together, we can all go forward a bit quicker than we can alone.
Everyone here today knows the Gambling Commission has broad powers, powers we’re not afraid to use either. Where we see failings, we will take action. And we have raised standards through the use of these powers. But we also know that relying on our statutory powers alone to make progress is often not the right way to go. If we have willing stakeholders, its often far quicker to make changes and raise standards through cooperation and collaboration. Now I’ll talk more about what we’re seeing in our compliance work shortly but it is right to acknowledge that over recent years we have seen real progress in addressing those most extreme examples of severe harm that were appearing time and time again in our casework. The progress that has been made by industry, in turn creates room for us to start building that more collaborative relationship with operators that I know we both want.
We have built a regular cycle of engagement with Bacta, including regular roundtable meetings and visits from our Executive team to some of your establishments, seeing more often what it’s like on the ground for you and your businesses. I hope John, George and those of you in this room today who have been in those meetings and attended or hosted those visits have found them as helpful as we have.
This is not to say there won’t still be times when we disagree. It’s inevitable in the relationship between a regulator and the businesses it licenses, that sometimes there will be areas we don’t see eye to eye. And we will continue to be exacting in fulfilling the role that Parliament gave to us in the Gambling Act of ensuring gambling is safe, fair and crime free. But it does mean when we come to work to implement changes from the Gambling Act Review, wanting to improve the evidence base for gambling in Great Britain or a number of other priorities, we have a relationship that allows for open discussion and debate on what the best way forward is.
None of this can continue or be built upon if we see industry compliance dip though. Over recent months our compliance team has been able to get out on the road in a big way to assess how things are looking in the AGC sector. So in that spirit of transparency and collaboration, we thought it would be helpful to give you an overview today of what they found.
As many of you know, because you hosted our Compliance colleagues, over late Summer and early Autumn, the team were conducting a round of assessments in the sector and so we wanted to take this opportunity to share some of what we found.
One of the areas we focussed on was the actions being taken to support customer interaction in order to meet Social Responsibility code 3.4.1. This is crucial because it is an area of regulation where we require operators to be proactive in identifying harm: interacting to manage that risk and evaluating the impact of action you have taken to see whether further enhanced action is necessary. Our guidance in relation to customer interaction within premises must be taken into account when controls are designed for your businesses.
Identifying those that may be at risk of potential gambling related harm means you knowing your customers. Our guidance highlights the key indicators that should be included in the approach to customer interaction. These are:
- time indicators
- spend
- behaviour or appearance
- use of gambling management tools
- customer-led contact
- play indicators
- big wins.
Where we have seen examples of good practice it has been where those interactions are meaningful in nature. Interacting with a customer should be more than just a customer service chat, and should be constructed to lead to action which deals with the risk identified. To support with that our guidance offers the following key points that an interaction should include:
- observation – behaviour or activity you have spotted or something the customer tells you
- action – contact that prompts the customer to think about their gambling, for you to find out more, and an opportunity for you to offer information or support
- outcome – what you or the customer did next. In some cases, you may need to monitor the customer’s gambling to spot any change which may prompt further action.
And to be clear, it is vital that interactions are recorded so that your staff understand decisions and engagements with customers, to offer appropriate support and follow the appropriate actions
We have seen plenty of examples of great staff doing a great job on the ground in this sector. When I’ve met with folks working in premises I’ve always been struck by how many of them really do care about their customers, how they know them as individuals and how they want to do a great job. It is one of your sector’s real strengths in many ways. But at times they have also talked about how challenging it can be to identify and support someone that might be experiencing harm, and the impact it can sometimes have personally on them. So it is essential that leaders in this sector continue to ensure that all staff are fully trained to identify the markers and behaviours that could indicate harm, to understand how they should deal with customer interactions and are well supported in meeting those responsibilities.
One of the areas where we found scope for further improvements was around evaluation. Without overall evaluation of a customer interaction approach how does a business know it works and is achieving the objective of the licence condition? Evaluation is certainly something that we will continue to look for during assessments. Operators must also evaluate each individual interaction to understand its impact on the customer and whether any follow up action is required.
If you were to boil this down to one simple message it would be “Don’t just check your policies and procedures are being followed, check that they work in practice.”
Anti-Money Laundering (AML) was the other area that stood out in our assessments and where we want to make sure you all have the tools to be complaint and protect your customers and your businesses. Having an up to date risk assessment that informs your policies, procedures and controls around AML is essential. We provide a risk assessment for the sector that should be considered along with your knowledge of your own business risks and again, staff should be trained to ensure they are aware of risks and know what to do.
The Commission want to work with Bacta and all of you, Bacta members, to ensure that customer interaction and AML processes are working well and meeting regulatory requirements. Our requirements for customer interaction and AML have been in place for some time, and our expectations are clear. However, we recognise that sharing examples of good practice and lessons learned is an effective way of supporting future compliance. We will continue to share – as we have done today - information about gaps in compliance and ways to check and ensure that you are compliant. We also call you to share with us any areas where the guidance and communications could be amended to raise awareness of good practice and evolve to stay up to date.
All AGC operators should have received a letter from our compliance team this week advising on our expectations around customer interaction and AML and how the industry can raise standards. We will be following this up with some education workshops in the new year.
Demonstrating that your sector upholds high standards and maintains strong levels of regulatory compliance is also highly relevant to the next topic I will turn to - the Gambling Act Review.
The Gambling White Paper set out a wide ranging package of reforms. Whilst the enhanced consumer protections are understandably receiving most of the attention, there were a number of proposals that many of you were seeking to help your businesses remain competitive.
There were, of course, those that put forward arguments against any changes that are seen as ‘liberalising’ in nature. Now the strongest response that you will have is to clearly demonstrate that the licensing objectives are safe and will continue to be safe in your hands. And the way to demonstrate that is by seeking to be an exemplar of regulatory compliance.
I know that, at a human level, being placed under the compliance microscope can feel uncomfortable. But by acting upon what we have seen in our casework you put yourselves in the strongest possible position to argue for reforms that will benefit your businesses without compromising the licensing objectives.
Most of those reforms will be for Government to deliver but before I wrap up I just wanted to give you a quick roundup of where the Commission is on the implementation of those reforms that we are leading on.
At the end of August a number of changes came into effect, some of which will be apply to you and your businesses. Most notably, we extended the requirement to conduct test purchasing, as part of controls to prevent underage gambling to smaller operators. This is also alongside an amended good practice code to implement Think 25 approaches to age verification.
In coming months, further rule changes will come into effect to ensure fairness and transparency to customers as well as to make gambling safer through a range of measures. We will also be looking to publish our next round of consultation responses in the near future. These will be about the consultations we published roughly this time last year and as a reminder the topics they covered were:
- proposals relating to incentives such as free bets and bonuses, to make sure they do not encourage harmful or excessive gambling
- proposals to empower consumers and make it easier for them to manage their gambling in ways that work for them, such as deposit limits
- proposals to increase transparency to consumers if their funds are held by licensees that offer no protection in the event of insolvency
- removing Commission requirements that would become obsolete due to the government’s upcoming statutory levy – by removing the current Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) requirement to make annual financial contributions to a set list of research, prevention and treatment organisations.
I know that many of you in the room today have engaged with those consultations, shared your evidence and have helped to strengthen the final requirements.
In the New Year I also think you can also expect to hear more from us in terms of the next round of Gambling Act Review related consultations as well. This will include a consultation on Game Machine Technical Standards, the next significant milestone is the publication of the consultation in early 2025. It will clearly outline our finalised proposals for all stakeholders. We are grateful for the feedback provided during pre-consultation engagement but it wouldn’t be appropriate to share detailed proposal updates in advance of publication.
All of this work is of course focussed on delivering the commitments of the 2023 White Paper and so we continue to work closely with DCMS on not only our own areas to implement but also in supporting the Government with their own next steps.
And that of course brings me back to where we started. It’s only through working together that we can deliver on the goals of the White Paper and the Act itself for safer, fairer and crime free gambling. Bacta members are a critical part of that work and at the Commission we want to continue to work with you: to deliver high levels of compliance, to deliver a sustainable industry and to deliver for your customers. We are all making progress. So let’s keep going in the year ahead.
Thank you.
Last updated: 28 November 2024
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