Institute of Licensing Gambling Conference - Ian Angus speech
29 April 2026
This speech was delivered by Director of Policy Ian Angus at the Institute of Licensing Gambling Conference on 28 April 2026.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Hello everyone and thank you for that welcome. My name is Ian Angus, Director of Policy at the Gambling Commission and I’m really pleased to have some time with you today to discuss the work we at the Commission - but also many of you in this audience, from local authorities – are doing to make gambling safer, fairer and crime free.
And as always there is plenty to talk about. Gambling rarely stands still and since I was fortunate enough to join many of you at the Institute of Licensing Annual Training Conference in November, plenty has changed. So I will start by giving you an update on how gambling looks today: how many people are gambling, the level of harms and what gambling looks like on High Streets up and down the country. But how gambling and consumers are interacting is in many ways not what’s changing most at present. The Budget last November is already leading to changes in how gambling companies are operating and this again is being felt on High Streets. We’re also now moving into the last year of our current Corporate Strategy and – we think- edging towards completing our role in the implementation of the Gambling Act Review White Paper too and I’ll spend some time discussing what this looks like too. I’ll also touch on how important the relationship is between the Gambling Commission and local authorities across the country. Finally, I’ll give you the heads up on some of the changes that are coming down the track. And of course, I’ll be very happy to take any questions you might have when I’ve finished.
So plenty to get our teeth into but first, what does gambling in Great Britain look like today?
The Gambling Commission sources its official statistics for gambling participation and prevalence from our own Gambling Survey for Great Britain, or GSGB for short. The GSGB is the largest gambling survey of its kind in the world, surveying around 20,000 people from across Great Britain every year. That means we can get some quite granular information about what people gamble on, what products are most risky and, on the flip side, the reasons people enjoy gambling as well. So what does it tell us today? Well, in the GSGB’s second Annual Report published last October, almost half - 48 percent - of participants aged 18 and over had participated in any form of gambling in the past four weeks.
Participants were more likely to gamble online than gamble in person, by 38 percent to 29 percent respectively. But it’s worth remembering that much of this difference was accounted for by people purchasing lottery tickets online. Actually, when lottery draws are removed, 18 percent of participants had gambled in person, compared with 16 percent online. And that is consistent with the previous year, showing the continuing role gambling in person has.
The most commonly reported activities were playing the National Lottery at 31 percent, buying tickets for other charity lotteries at 16 percent and buying scratchcards at 13 percent. These are all activities that many people do on their local high street or whilst otherwise out and about. By comparison 11 percent of us have had a bet in the last 4 weeks and 5 percent have gambled on a fruit machine or slots game.
Now as I said, the GSGB also gives us figures for the prevalence of gambling harms as well and a picture of what people get out of gambling too. The GSGB uses the Problem Gambling Survey Index or PGSI to track gambling harms and the percentage of all participants who scored 8+ on the PGSI – so those who may be gambling with negative consequences and a possible lack of control – was 2.7 percent. This was statistically stable when compared to the previous year.
At the same time the GSGB tells us that when asked to rate their feelings towards gambling, 42 percent of adults who gambled in the past 12 months rated the last time they gambled positively with another 37 percent giving a neutral answer. And here in lies a key point to always keep in mind when we think about gambling regulation: gambling is enjoyed by millions of people each week and the vast majority of those who gamble will do so with no issues. But gambling can and does cause harms as well and left unchecked, sometimes these harms can be severe in the extreme.
Whilst we were rolling out the GSGB over recent years, the Commission has also altered the way we gather our regulatory returns as well, meaning that this year, for the first time, we’ve been able to begin to publish this data quarterly instead of just annually as went before. The most recent data that we published in February is for between July and September last year, and that tells us the Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) of all gambling in Great Britain, including lotteries, was £4.3 billion. This compares roughly in line with the last annual report for these figures which stated the GGY for 2024/25 was £16.8 billion. But quarterly data here means we can get closer to how gambling is being felt in the town centres of your communities that bit quicker. The quarterly data I referenced a moment ago also tells us that in September last year there were:
- 8,254 gambling premises across Great Britain
- 5,782 of these were betting shops
- 1,454 of them were AGCs or Adult Gaming Centres.
These numbers show slight changes even from the figures for March 2025 - 39 more AGCs, 43 fewer betting shops and 20 more premises overall. These figures and changes of course are minor. But they are still interesting when we stop and think about the narrative we sometimes hear in the media. It wasn’t so long ago we were being warned of an explosion in gambling premises on the High Street. Things may vary community to community, but the stats don’t back up that view nationwide. I also want you to hold on to these figures when we think about some of the decisions operators are taking this year in a moment. The last stat I want to share is that as of last September, there are 190,965 machines in Gambling Commission licensed premises in Great Britain – a slight increase year on year.
These stats are interesting too as they effectively give us a snapshot of where gambling was before last year’s Budget. The Gambling Commission of course is not there to advise or give opinions on tax. And I can safely say, speaking from experience as a recovering former local Councillor, I’m grateful for that. But the 2025 Budget did set out a number of changes to how gambling is taxed in the UK:
- remote gaming duty – up to 40 percent from April 2026, from 21 percent
- general betting duty – up to 25 percent from April 2027, from 15 percent
- albeit this excludes Self-Service Betting Terminals (SSBT's), Spread Betting, Pool Betting and Horse Racing
- the Budget also states that Bingo duty will be abolished from April 2026.
Now the Treasury acknowledged one of the likely impacts of these changes when it announced that the Commission would receive an additional £26 million over the next three years to tackle illegal gambling. We are pleased that the effectiveness of our work to tackle illegal gambling has been recognised by the Treasury in this way and this funding will certainly allow us to upscale our activity. One way that you may hear less about though, but which is definitely of importance to local authorities, is that for the first time this funding will allow us to invest more specifically in addressing land-based illegal gambling. We have always been a little hamstrung by the size of our own resources in this space, but this will give us a capability now to do a lot more in the land-based space than we've been able to do before. We will still need to work closely with all of you and the Police too, but this will allow for us to do more.
The Treasury weren’t the only ones to act in light of the tax changes though and given recent announcements by various leading gambling operators, we are now expecting to see a number of gambling premises close. Our regulatory returns data may well tell the story of these closures over the coming year or so. At the Commission, for our part we are determined to do what we can to prevent the illegal gambling market from beginning to operate at scale in Great Britain. I’ve already touched on the extra resources we will have to throw at this effort but we also intend to look to see how we can encourage innovation and improvements to the customer experience, alongside making gambling safe and fair. This could include a strategic piece of work to review the impact, efficiency and burden of current regulatory requirements. Such a review would be consistent with the Government’s wider regulatory reform agenda but it requires resource as well. This means that, like other areas we hope to do more on in the year ahead, it is dependent on the outcome of the consultation on our own Fees run by Government earlier this year.
Now if you are sat there listening to all this thinking, that this sounds like potentially an awful lot of change I think I would agree with you. And it will take time to see how all this shakes out, including in the communities you work in. But some things don’t change and that includes the Commission’s goals and our approach. We will still want gambling that is safe, fair and crime free and we still want to work with anyone who shares those goals. That includes gambling firms who we want to continue to work closely with in order to deliver compliance at the earliest opportunity. And it definitely includes our co-regulators. I’ll return to the importance of our relationship in a bit but first, what are we at the Commission focused on in the year ahead.
We’re now entering the final year of our Corporate Strategy and last week we published our Business Plan for 2026/27. And as you would expect, this lays out what we aim to deliver against the five strategic focuses detailed in our Corporate Strategy:
- using data and analytics to make gambling regulation more effective
- enhancing our core operational functions
- setting clear evidence-based requirements for licensees
- being proactive and addressing issues at the earliest opportunity
- and regulating a successful National Lottery.
And this covers more work on illegal gambling as we’ve already discussed, looking to further improve our data maturity and evidence base and continuing to both take decisive action and proactively engage with operators, to ensure compliance with our rules. It also sets out our next steps on the implementation of the Gambling Act review White Paper.
And connected to that, one of the major items that we are already progressing from last year is our consultation on gaming machines. Something that will impact land based gambling and the premises you all licence. The consultation ran early last year and was focussed on the gaming machine technical standards and the related testing strategy. At the end of January this year we published the first part of our response. Whilst the full response will be published later this Summer, in January we announced that from 29 July 2026 gambling operators must immediately remove machines if the Commission informs them that the manufacture, supply, installation, adaption, maintenance or repair of the machine was not carried out in reliance on a gaming machine technical operating licence, or did not comply with other standards.
The change is aimed at streamlining processes and ensuring non-compliant machines are swiftly removed from premises - a benefit to consumers and operators. As I say, when it comes to the rest of the consultation, we are still considering consultation responses, supplementary data, research and evidence reports. But we expect to publish a full response in the Summer.
We intend to return to our Business Plan once the outcome of the consultation on our fees is confirmed so that will be something else to look out for later in the year.
And keeping you up to date with what we’re doing is of course really important to us at the Commission, because of our vital relationship with local authorities as co-regulatory partners.
Everyone in this hall today knows that the Gambling Act 2005 gave powers to both the Commission and local authorities to license operators, to levy fees and have significant enforcement powers. This relationship has never been questioned since, it was confirmed in the Gambling Act review, and it is one that I know we at the Commission value highly.
We are not a large regulator and whilst being based in Birmingham means we can get to anywhere in Great Britain relatively easily, we simply don’t have the resources to be out on every High Street across Great Britain. Local authorities therefore have a crucial role in the regulation of gambling across the country. And you are a vital source of intelligence and data for the Commission and our work.
This is a relationship we want to continue to nurture. Through the webinars we run, the bulletins and updates we send out and at face-to-face events like today, we want to make sure we give you the support we can, so you can deliver for your communities. In fact we are running a training webinar about gaming machines on the 12 May which if you are from a Licensing Authority (LA), you should have received an invite email to attend. Please do sign up if you can.
In November when I spoke at the IoL annual conference I talked about the questionnaire we had put out asking for feedback on our guidance for Licensing Authorities as we considered reviewing our guidance. Well I’m pleased to tell you today that in our Business Plan, we have committed to consulting on amendments to the ‘Guidance to Licensing Authorities’ in order to take account of Gambling Act Review (GAR) reforms by both government and the Commission. We will also take the opportunity to reflect relevant case law and explore modernising the content to ensure it remains accessible, relevant and impactful for stakeholders.
Of course, as is clear from what I’ve already said today, national Government plays its part in the regulation of gambling as well and at the Commission we work closely with our sponsoring Department, DCMS. Government has of course committed to exploring how to give local authorities the power to carry out gambling impact assessments when looking at licensing decisions in your communities. And for our part the Gambling Act review recommended new powers for us to tackle illegal gambling online. Both of these have been moving forward in Parliament recently through different legislation and we expect them to make it into law.
The Government recently made changes to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to deliver Gambling Impact Assessments (GIAs). When the Bill has completed its passage through Parliament and become law the Commission will work with DCMS to produce guidance for licensing authorities and other stakeholders on how to implement the measures using robust evidence to inform meaningful consultation with communities, operators and stakeholders prior to any GIA being implemented.
Any agreed GIA will also have to be included within the authorities Statement of Principles for gambling (gambling policy statement) before it can be used to introduce a presumption that any new premises licence application within the scope of the gambling impact assessment will be rejected.
There will be scope for applicants to assert that, despite any GIA that is in place, that their application is reasonably consistent with the licensing objectives and should be granted. Ultimately it may be for the courts to make a final judgement in relation to any appeal, but the new measures will enable licensing authorities to make more in depth decisions on premises licenses in communities, particularly in areas identified as being vulnerable to gambling-related harm.
Powers aside though, it is the collaboration between local authorities and the Commission that helps deliver on our shared goals of safer, fairer and crime free gambling.
And I think that is a good place to stop. 2026 sees a changing world but to some extent change has always been the case when it comes to gambling. At the Gambling Commission we will continue to work with our partners where we share the same goals. We remain committed to that collaboration and whatever else is changing in the world, that will not.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Last updated: 29 April 2026
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