Report
Annual report and accounts 2024 to 2025
The Gambling Commission's 2024 to 2025 annual report and accounts. For the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
Contents
- Foreword
- Performance report
- Accountability report
- Financial statements
- Notes on the accounts
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- Statement of accounting policies
- Statement of operating costs by operating segment
- Expenditure
- Income cash receipts
- Property, plant and equipment
- Right of use assets
- Intangible assets
- Financial instruments
- Cash and cash equivalents
- Trade and other receivables
- Trade and other payables
- Provisions and charges
- Retirement benefit obligations
- Lease liabilities
- Contingent liabilities disclosed under IAS 37
- Related party transactions
- Amounts of income to the Consolidated Fund
- Events after the reporting period
- Appendices
Directors’ report – Executive team
Andrew Rhodes
Chief Executive Officer
Andrew joined the Gambling Commission as Interim Chief Executive in June 2021, was appointed as permanent Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in June 2022 and was appointed as a Commissioner by the Secretary of State in July 2023.
As the Commission’s Accounting Officer, Andrew is personally responsible for safeguarding public funds, for propriety and regularity in the handling of those public funds and for the day-to-day operations and management of the Commission.
Andrew joined the Commission from Swansea University, where he was Registrar and Chief Operating Officer, and previously held a range of senior civil service roles at Director-General and Director level at the Department for Work and Pensions, the Food Standards Agency and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).
Sarah Gardner
Deputy Chief Executive Officer
Sarah joined the Commission in 2009 and has held a number of leadership roles across the Commission.
Sarah spent her earlier career as a civil servant in various government departments covering a wide range of topics including tax, international policy, consumer protection, competition, regulation, small business, and enterprise policy. Sarah was appointed Deputy Chief Executive in June 2020. As part of her current role, she oversees a portfolio which includes regulation of the National Lottery and the development of the corporate strategy.
Alistair Quigley
Chief Technology Officer - responsible for Digital, IT and Facilities
Alistair has had a 35-year career in IT and started his early career managing a Midlands-based IT training centre, before spending 6 years with National Express, becoming their IT Director and overseeing the transport firm’s rapid online growth.
He was managing director of IVU Traffic Technologies UK, a specialist software developer, before joining the Commission 19 years ago.
Helen Child
Head of Governance and Data Protection Officer
Helen has worked for the Commission since 2019. She is responsible for corporate governance, information and risk management, and expert groups. Helen is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Lincoln in the Lincoln International Business School.
She has previously worked in the voluntary sector, and for the Metropolitan Police Service, Transport for London and in the Civil Service.
Helen is a trustee of Family Society, an adoption agency operating in the Midlands.
Helen Gibson
Finance Director - responsible for Finance, Procurement, Business Planning and Performance Reporting
Helen joined the Commission in March 2022, having worked in a number of senior Finance roles within central government.
Helen previously worked in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Exiting the EU, with significant experience across finance, shared services, corporate services and operational delivery. This includes leading on finance and corporate activities for the G7 Presidency Taskforce, managing through a challenging period to help deliver the first in-person international summit since coronavirus (COVID-19), in June 2021.
John Tanner
Executive Director – responsible for Fourth National Lottery Competition
John joined the Commission in 2019 and is a highly experienced project delivery professional with an extensive background in delivering major government projects across a number of departments, most recently HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Home Office.
He is a graduate of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s Major Projects Leadership Academy.
John has been responsible for running the 4NL Competition allowing the transition to a new operator for the first time in the history of the National Lottery on 1 February 2024, and oversight and assurance of the delivery of the Allwyn full application.
Katharine Diamond
General Counsel
Katharine joined the Commission in January 2024.
Katharine is a barrister and was called to the Bar in 1998. Katharine has extensive experience in legal roles across government and arms-length bodies in a wide range of public law areas spanning litigation, advisory, legislative drafting, information law and regulatory disciplines. Katharine is a qualified arbitrator.
Katharine has held roles including:
- the first Director at the Pubs Code Adjudicator
- Senior advisory lawyer in the Department for Energy and Climate change
- Senior advisory lawyer in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
- Advisory and Bill lawyer in the Cabinet Office
- Employment litigation lawyer in the Government Legal Department.
Throughout her career Katharine has honed her craft in providing strategic advice in technical, complex and novel legal areas often at the intersection of public and private law; building, developing and leading cohesive and diverse teams in the advisory and regulatory fields.
Lucy Denton
Director of Communications - responsible for Communications, public affairs and contact centre
With a career spanning a range of roles across a wide variety of disciplines in government and health, Lucy joined the Commission in July 2021.
Her approach over her career thus far has established her as an innovative leader of communications in a digital age. Prior to joining the Commission, she led the multi-disciplinary Communications team at the Office of the Public Guardian, an agency of the Ministry of Justice. Her team’s award-winning diversity and inclusion campaigns received notable praise within the industry.
Lucy also led strategic communications and campaigns at the Government Digital Service for over 2 years. She established an award-winning approach to digital communications as part of the cross-government response to the 2015 Ebola crisis while at the Department of Health and worked at the House of Commons for 4 years, orchestrating cutting-edge social media and digital strategies to engage audiences.
Natasha Harris
Director of People Services
Natasha Harris joined the Commission in August 2023 as the Executive Director for People Services. Natasha is an accomplished HR Director with more than 20 years’ experience working in public and private sector organisations.
Having delivered transformational change in different contexts, Natasha has been credited for her ability to develop and implement HR strategies that improve the overall employee experience and positively impacting organisational performance. With equality, diversity and inclusion as a cornerstone to delivering an improved employee experience, Natasha has driven demonstrable change by leveraging and creating opportunities to diversify the workforce by embedding inclusion into workplace practices including attraction, recruitment and development.
Alongside her work and family life, Natasha volunteers as a school governor at a local special school for children with autism and sits on the HR and Remuneration Committees at Birmingham City University.
Tim Miller
Executive Director - responsible for Research and Policy
Tim joined the Commission in 2016 after a career spanning over 15 years in the regulatory and public sector.
Tim was previously head of policy and communications at the Local Government Ombudsman and prior to that was head of public affairs at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. These roles followed 10 years at the Law Society of England and Wales in a variety of regulatory posts.
In his role at the Commission, Tim leads the Commission’s programme of work to implement the Government’s Gambling White Paper. He is also the temporary Executive Director for Operations from 31 March 2025.
Kay Roberts (resigned 31 March 2025)
Executive Director - responsible for Operations
Kay was appointed as Executive Director of Operations at the Commission in September 2022. She led the Licensing, Compliance, Enforcement, and Intelligence functions at the Commission.
She had a successful career as Head of Operations for Ombudsman Services. In this previous role, Kay had leadership responsibility for the delivery of dispute resolution for the Communications, Energy and Parking sectors.
Kay is a qualified Trading Standards Officer and worked for local government for over 15 years, latterly as Head of Enforcement, Fraud, and Investigations for Cheshire East Council. She has always had a keen interest in regulation and consumer protection, starting her career with a degree in consumer protection.
Register of disclosable interests
The Commission has adopted a managing conflict of interest policy to outline the approach taken to avoiding, declaring and managing the interests of Commissioners, Independent Committee Members, Executives and members of Expert Groups.
The policy requires eligible individuals to submit an annual declaration, alongside updates as interests are acquired or disposed of. All agendas require attendees to declare any relevant interests in agenda items at the start of each Board, Committee or Executive meeting and absent themselves from relevant discussions. Other than Charles Counsell’s very brief appointment with Independent Age, no directorships or other significant interests were held by Board members or executives that may have conflicted with their management responsibilities. The Commission is satisfied that no relevant issues were impacted by Charles Counsell’s conflict.
Directors’ disclosure
As far as the directors are aware, there is no relevant audit information of which the auditors have not been made aware. All reasonable steps have been taken by the directors in order to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditors are aware of this information.
Last updated: 15 October 2025
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