IoL Annual Conference 2025 - Ian Angus speech
27 November 2025
This speech was delivered by director of policy Ian Angus at the Institute of Licensing (IoL) Conference on 27 November 2025.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Hello everyone and thank you for joining this session for an update on gambling regulation. That’s all the more appreciated as I know that gambling has been touched on in several of the sessions at this week’s Conference, including at the workshop run by our own Jane Blade.
My name is Ian Angus and I am a Director of Policy at the Gambling Commission and it is great to be here with you today to reflect on how together as co-regulators, the Commission and Local Authorities can make gambling safer, fairer and crime free.
I will start with an overview of what gambling looks like in Great Britain today, including highlighting some of the statistics we’ve published this month. I’ll then look at how we work with Local Authorities, our complementary roles and powers and how we think we can support each other in that. This will bring me on to more data and the importance of our Licensing Authority, or LA returns and what we’re seeing in terms of inspections. This year has been a busy one for regulatory policy as well and so I’ll update you on our work to implement the 2023 Gambling Act Review White Paper as well as highlighting areas where we at the Commission are looking at beyond the White Paper commitments. And of course, I will be very happy to answer your questions at the end as well. So, plenty of ground to cover but let’s begin with how gambling looks in Great Britain today.
In October we published our latest Annual Report of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) which is our flagship participation and prevalence statistics, surveying around 20,000 adults a year. It is the biggest survey of its kind in the world. And this year’s GSGB data makes clear how significant gambling is in Great Britain. Nearly half - 48 per cent - of participants aged 18 and over participated in any form of gambling in the past four weeks.
Participants were more likely to gamble online than gamble in person, by 38 per cent to 29 per cent respectively, however, much of this difference was accounted for by people purchasing lottery tickets online. Actually, when lottery draws are removed, 18 per cent of participants had gambled in person, compared with 16 per cent online. This remains consistent with the previous year and shows the continuing role gambling in person has.
The most commonly reported activities were playing the National Lottery at 31 per cent, buying tickets for other charity lotteries at 16 per cent and buying scratchcards at 13 per cent – all activities that many people do on their local high street or whilst out and about doing their shopping. 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.
There is a wealth of data for those of you who are interested in the GSGB that I would encourage you to explore on our website.
Another set of annual data that we publish and that also helps us put together the picture of gambling in Great Britain are our industry statistics and we have only just published the latest stats for this set this week. Our industry statistics detail the size of the market in both financial terms but also, maybe more interestingly for us today, in the scale of its bricks and mortar up and down the country – how many premises there currently are. And so what we have published this week states that in terms of Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) – that is money bet or staked, minus prizes - the industry made £16.8 billion in the year to end of March 2025. £4.8 billion of that was from land-based sectors, including arcades, betting, bingo and casinos. And in terms of how may premises there are:
8,234 - Total number of premises in Great Britain
5,825 - Total number of betting shops
Whilst the GGY figures – both remote and non-remote - are showing increases on the year before, it’s worth noting that both those premises figures are showing modest declines, something I suspect many of you might be surprised to hear given the narrative in parts of the media. Besides this there are 1451 Adult Gaming Centres (AGC) across GB too, a slight increase from the year before – by some 49 premises - not an explosion. And these numbers are from the 2,179 gambling operators licensed in the GB market – itself a slight decline on the year before too.
This last year has seen some very heated debates in and around gambling. Now, those of you who follow gambling and its regulation closely may say ‘what’s new’ to that but I think this last year the heat has been turned up and for the first time in a long time, I’d say the role of councils and what is happening on high streets has been a major part of that.
And I think that’s unfair on the hard work that local authorities do in this space. The Gambling Act 2005 gave powers to both the Commission and local authorities to license operators, to levy fees and have significant enforcement powers. We have that role at a national level, and councils do at the local. We work with many local authorities, year in and year out on how to regulate gambling on the ground, on joint efforts to gather data, protect the vulnerable from harm and to share intelligence. Many of you do sterling work on the ground but there are some local authorities who aren’t as active in this space as they should – and more on that later. We are clear that local authorities have an integral role in making gambling safer, fairer and crime free across Great Britain.
And so I want to be clear with you today, the Gambling Commission has no interest in calls from some for us to move on to your turf and start doing your job for you. We respect our relationship with you as co-regulators and that means we want to work closely with you on our shared roles.
We will continue to provide local authorities appropriate support and work in close partnership with you to aid the exercise of your functions under the Gambling Act. And we want to continue our efforts with you to share best practice and resources where we can – through events like this week but also through our own LA bulletin and quarterly webinars that Rob Burkitt runs. But it cannot be the role of the national regulator to fill any gaps left in local regulation.
We value our relationship with Local Authorities and there are many important things that come from it. One of those is a rich seam of data. The Gambling Commission is an evidence based regulator – we are continually striving to improve the evidence base around gambling in Great Britain. And one valuable resource we have are the Licensing Authority Returns.
The LA Returns are a crucial resource for the Commission in understanding how land-based gambling is operating in Great Britain, year in and year out and the level of engagement we get on them from local authorities is great. This year we received returns from 329 authorities out of the 350 LAs who were asked to submit information. That’s an incredible 94 per cent response rate. A response rate that helps our work and in turn helps us work better with local authorities.
However, there are areas where more needs to be done. Those same returns for the period between April 2024 and March 2025 show that roughly a third of LAs didn’t conduct any inspections of gambling premises in their areas in that 12 month period. It’s also worth noting that with some 2208 inspections being carried out across Great Britain during that period, we’re also around a third down on total inspections since 2019/20, where 3,203 inspections, including test purchasing activity, were conducted.
Now we know that these numbers don’t tell the full picture – for a start since 2019/20, operators are now obliged to carry out third party test purchasing. We recognise much happens beyond the ‘inspection’ data. Licensing authorities are often in touch with the licensed entities in their patch in many and varied ways, on the phone or face to face. And we know how hard many LAs work on ensuring that the regulatory framework is maintained. But we also know – as do you – that there is talk at present of extra powers for local authorities around gambling regulation. I will touch on this further later on. Still, whilst I and my colleagues at the Commission are aware of the pressures and constraints on local government, I think it’s a useful point to remember a section of our guidance to Licencing Authorities:
“Fee setting must be transparent and licensing authorities should closely track their costs and be able to evidence how they arrived at the fee levels in order to demonstrate that they have been calculated on a cost recovery basis only. Fees should be reviewed annually.“
And this underlines the point: we do think that making full use of the powers LAs already have would not only help support our shared regulatory objectives for gambling but also go a long way to demonstrating that more powers are needed.
So there is more work to do but I am sure together, we can make further progress.
Speaking of progress, it has been another busy year on implementing the Gambling Act Review. Whilst we have published and started to implement various measures designed to strengthen protections online, the most significant changes for the land-based industry are undoubtedly our consultation on Gaming Machines that closed in the Summer.
The consultation was focussed on the gaming machine technical standards and the related testing strategy. It included proposals to:
introduce five new standards, a licence condition and a social responsibility code provision designed to support and empower consumers to use gaming machines safely at every stage of the customer journey – this includes proposals on time and monetary limit setting functionality and information provision such as safer gambling messaging and the display of net position and session time
amend three existing standards having considered industry proposals to improve customer enjoyment and gameplay
consolidate the existing 12 gaming machine technical standards into a single standard, whilst amending the format to be more consistent with our Remote gambling and software technical standards for greater clarity
update the gaming machine technical standards and the related testing strategy to remove obsolete material.
We were really delighted with the level of engagement we had on this consultation, both in the pre-consultation phase and in formal response with over 1000 responses being submitted. This of course means it is taking time to go through those responses but we are making progress and I would hope that in the new year we will be able to start publishing some of our findings and next steps.
DCMS are also currently consulting on two areas that relate to the land-based gambling industry:
adjustments to stakes and prizes for Category D gaming machines, including changes to stakes and prizes for crane grabs, coin pushers, and non-money prize machines, and on creating a new category of ‘slot-style’ non-money prize machines.
and measures to create a clearer distinction between AGCs and bingo premises and ensure land-based gambling premises have a licence type that is appropriate to their offering
the key proposal DCMS are seeking views on is establishment of a ‘bingo area’, occupying a minimum proportion of venue floor space, in all licensed bingo venues.
You will also be aware that DCMS have committed again to looking for a legislative vehicle to give local authorities powers to use cumulative impact assessments with respect to gambling licencing. Whilst this is a matter for government, it is of course something we, like you, will be watching closely.
But the world hasn’t stood still since 2023 and of course there are other areas where we are looking at what else can be progressed.
One example of this is of course the decision by Sheffield City Council to refuse a premises licence for an AGC in November 2023 which was fought all the way to Court, where the Council won earlier this year, upholding their decision not to grant the licence. We were lucky enough to get the thoughts of Sheffield City Council in our June LA Bulletin on this topic and if you didn’t read it at the time, I would encourage you to go back and read it on our website. Now I’m not here today to discuss that judgment in detail. But it is worth reflecting that nothing in legislation changed to make that judgment possible. So whether laws change or not, the world will and we need to make sure that how we work together keeps pace.
Some of you will already be aware of our work to review the guidance we provide to local authorities. A big thank you to those of you who contributed your thoughts and views through the questionnaire we circulated a little while ago – the returns were helpful and are helping to shape our thinking. The review will inform a decision on if and when we consult on a revised GLA.
One of the strengths of the gambling regulatory model in Great Britain – and one that was confirmed in the 2023 White Paper – is the co-regulatory model: Gambling Commission nationally, holding the board rooms to account and with local authorities on the high street. I’ve shared a link to our online resources for you there so please do if you haven’t already, have a read on what we share with you online.
Together we can continue to make gambling safer, fairer and crime free and I know we at the Commission are looking forward to working together with local authorities in the year ahead.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
Last updated: 27 November 2025
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