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
Foreword
Welcome to the Gambling Commission’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2024 to 2025. The year started with the publication of the Commission’s new 3-year Corporate Strategy, Gambling regulation in a digital age, which laid out our plan for the years ahead. Flowing from that, 2024 to 2025 was a busy and productive year for the Commission, in its work to make gambling in Great Britain safer, fairer and crime-free.
The implementation of the Government’s Gambling Act Review, (the Review), continued to be a key focus over the past year as we published consultation responses and implemented important changes to our rulebook, the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP).
Alongside our work to implement the Review, the National Lottery has also been a key priority. The National Lottery celebrated its thirtieth Birthday in 2024.
Our new Corporate Strategy, like its predecessor, is underpinned by our statutory duties and driven through our 5 areas for strategic focus:
- 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
- regulating a successful National Lottery.
The Annual Report and Accounts for 2024 to 2025 provides a detailed overview of a year of delivery for the Commission against those 5 areas for strategic focus. Whilst implementing the Review and the National Lottery have been crucial areas of focus, we have made good progress in other areas as well, including important strides in tackling illegal gambling, significant progress in our collection and use of data, and improving our operational and financial performance.
Our role in the implementation of the Review White Paper, High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age, is a crucial opportunity to deliver specific change for gambling in Great Britain. This complements and builds on the significant, long-term programme of measures the Commission already has in place.
Our first round of consultation responses related to the White Paper were published in May 2024, with staggered implementation dates for changes from financial vulnerability checks through to improved age verification. Further responses were published in February 2025. A supplementary consultation, focused on gaming machine technical standards and the related testing strategy was published in January 2025.
Our work to improve the evidence base for gambling in Great Britain is also crucial and another area in which we made real progress over the last year. The Commission published the first official statistics and annual report for the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) in 2024. GSGB is the largest survey of its kind in the world, with the Commission continuing to publish quarterly participation statistics as well as the annual report to provide an overview of the impact of gambling. We continued to publish regular industry statistics and further research in our Consumer Voice work. We also published an update on progress for our 3-year Evidence Gaps and Priorities 2023 to 2026 programme.
As a key component of our duties as a regulator, we have continued to regulate Allwyn Entertainment Limited (Allwyn) as the new Fourth National Lottery licence holder, including Allwyn’s implementation of the lottery under licence. There have been delays in Allwyn achieving full implementation which was agreed under the licence would be delivered by February 2025, which Allwyn was legally committed to. As a result, the Commission has initiated enforcement action, which is ongoing.
The Commission also continues to robustly defend 2 ongoing litigation claims from The New Lottery Company (TNLC), an unsuccessful bidder to run the National Lottery, in relation to the National Lottery Competition and subsequent award.
It was announced in the run up to the National Lottery’s 30th Birthday that £50 billion had been raised by it for Good Causes since its launch in 1994. Ensuring that returns to Good Causes are maximised is a key statutory objective and seeing £1.8 billion raised to support Good Causes in arts, sports, heritage and community projects during the year was an important start to the fourth Licence period.
Our Operations Directorate made significant progress in the last year, with over 9,700 compliance activities undertaken, compared to over 4,200 in the previous year, which was almost 3,000 higher than any previous year. We took enforcement action against 24 operators in total leading to £4.2 million in fines or regulatory settlements. With the penalties down on the year before, these are potentially positive indicators coming from the work that the Commission has been doing to raise standards of compliance with our rules and on the part of operators as well. Our published impact metrics now include quarterly information on how operators are performing in our Compliance assessments. For the first time, this gives regular information on assessed performance and increases transparency in this important area of our work.
Alongside this, we have continued to make significant progress in tackling illegal online gambling, through our upstream work with third parties in finance, payment services and internet service providers.
As compliance with our rules improves, this allows us to continue building a collaborative relationship with those we regulate, holding further events to foster cooperation. We held a third conference focused on improving the evidence base, Building the Bigger Picture, and organised 2 events specifically to bring together operators, charities, researchers, Government departments and other regulators to be briefed on compliance, share best practice and discuss key issues. The first Operator Engagement Forum was held in September 2024 and a second in April 2025. We have continued to hold regular roundtables, speak at events and visit stakeholders and operators. We have continued to prioritise our engagement with a wide range of stakeholders with nearly 200 senior level meetings and engagements. This has included meetings and other forms of engagement with Parliamentarians, campaign groups, charities, other government departments, international regulators, and partners.
Investing in our people and making sure we have the right skills, opportunities and experiences to build a workforce that performs effectively remains a priority. None of the achievements or progress over the last year would have been possible without the talented and dedicated people who work at the Commission, and that is why we are committed to making sure our people feel as supported in their work as possible. We were, therefore, really pleased to be accredited as a Great Place to Work for a third year in a row and to be accredited one of the UK's Best Workplaces for Women for 2024. We would like to thank everyone who works for the Commission for helping us to achieve these results and for their hard work and professionalism throughout another busy year.
Now in the second year of our latest Corporate Strategy, we will continue to deliver against the ambitious agenda we have set out within it. We will maximise our work with others and look to further exploit all the tools and resources at our disposal to regulate gambling and the National Lottery in a way which strikes the right balance, ensuring that consumers of gambling and the National Lottery may continue to enjoy those products, while also ensuring that appropriate protections are in place. The substantial work done in 2024 to 2025 gives the Commission a great opportunity to make further steps forward in our work to make gambling safer, fairer and crime free. This is an opportunity everyone at the Commission is fully dedicated to making the most of in the year ahead.
Charles Counsell
Interim Chair
Andrew Rhodes
Chief Executive and Accounting Officer
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Annual report 2024 to 2025 - Performance report
Last updated: 15 October 2025
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