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Report

Annual Report and Accounts 2022 to 2023

The Gambling Commission's 2022 to 2023 Annual Report and Accounts. For the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

  1. Contents
  2. Protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed by gambling

Protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed by gambling

Although rates of problem gambling in Great Britain have remained stable, gambling harm continues to be a high-profile public health issue which requires a consistent national coordinated response to address the impact it can have on individuals, family life and communities.

Due to this, we work hard to understand the constantly changing factors that influence gambling behaviour so we can focus on preventing harm to vulnerable and young people before it occurs.

We take a precautionary approach to interpreting available evidence and approaching new developments where appropriate.

Through our regulatory powers, over the past year we have also demonstrated our constant action against online and land-based gambling operators who fail to protect people from gambling harm.

Our highlights in this area

The following sets out our highlights over the past year for the strategic objective of protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed by gambling.

We improved the standards of conduct and competence by licence holders by issuing licences only to those suitable, whilst pushing a culture of compliance within all gambling operators.

We worked to ensure that licence holders worked collaboratively to share and develop best practice around reducing gambling harm.

We identified where the development of some gambling products posed a risk and responded where required, ensuring that they are within our Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) at every stage.

Throughout the year we have continued to work with our Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) to gain their input on a variety of topics, such as our evidence priorities, methodology design for collection of official statistics, and developing our understanding of gambling harms on women. In addition, we worked with members of LEAP to hold meetings with a wider range of people with lived experience of gambling harms – with workshops focusing on people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and women.

We have also expanded our work to obtain views and insights from the widest range of gamblers’ experiences – including those who have not experienced harm. This has included engagement with people who have gambled during the FIFA World Cup and exploration of the impact of changes to the cost of living on gambling behaviour.

As part of our work to reduce gambling harms, we managed a process in line with our published Statement of principles for determining financial penalties, to approve destinations for regulatory settlements with a cumulative value of millions of pounds for socially responsible purposes. As part of our transparent approach, the details of destinations of regulatory settlements to be applied for socially responsible purposes are published online.

We proactively published a variety of Gambling Commission-led and independent research and authoritative data. This included the publication of reports and data into young people and gambling, gambling participation and prevalence of problem gambling, and typical consumer journeys.

As part of our drive to communicate the results widely, we launched a new webinar programme which allowed us to explain research further to stakeholders.

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