Harris Hagan reviews the Gambling Commission's business plan

The Gambling Commission has published its business plan for 2018-19. Is it more of the same, or does it reveal any change of direction for the Commission? As always, ‘raising standards’ permeates the Commission’s message in this document. This year, the particular standards the Commission is looking to raise are in connection with:

– protections given to consumers’ interests
– measures to prevent harm to consumers
– increasing money raised for good causes by lotteries
– improving its own systems and regulation.

Some notable measures to be taken by the Commission in the coming year involve consultations on changes to the LCCP relating to advertising, unfair terms, complaints, customer verification and customer interaction. We can expect to see the LCCP strengthened to reflect the findings of the CMA’s investigations and a proposed evaluation by the Commission of markers used to identify gambling-related harm.

Rather than focusing on penalising operators when they get it wrong, there are indications that the Commission plans to give real thought on how to prevent problems arising in the first place. There are various programmes of research and analysis planned, including the above-mentioned evaluation of markers and assessments of operator data used to reduce harm and prevent crime, of gambling-related crime and of the effectiveness of protections for National Lottery players. Hopefully the results of this work will be shared with operators as part of the planned programme of publications and events for the industry on best practice.

It is positive to see some focus on improvement within the Commission and the various proposed updates to its IT systems. We can only hope that changes to systems, data processing and the website will not result in significant downtime for online applications and eServices. The Commission will also establish a panel to advise on digital technology developments. Greater understanding within the Commission must be positive news for operators looking to introduce the use of cryptocurrencies or their own blockchain-based tokens.

Raising standards

Although the Commission’s three-year strategy for 2018-21 recognises that the potential harm to consumers from illegal gambling is significant, the business plan for the coming year does not include any actions with a view to ensuring British consumers are only gambling with licensed websites.

While nobody can argue with the Commission’s aim to raise standards in the regulated market, the higher the standards that are expected of licensed operators, the greater the incentive is to operate outside of that regime. The inability to place adverts on television and other media without a licence is a significant incentive to become licensed, however it would be unwise for the Commission to rely on this, particularly with digital advertising flourishing.

It is unclear what the scale of the unregulated market might be so, as a starting point, it would be helpful to see a programme of research by the Commission.

Overall there are some positive steps to be picked out from between the buzzwords in the Commission’s business plan, and hopefully these will translate to a focus on helping licensees get things right in the first place.

Melanie Ellis is a senior associate in the Harris Hagan gambling law team and has been advising clients from all sectors of the industry on gambling law and regulation since the Gambling Act 2005 came into force. She graduated from Oxford in 2003 and then trained as a barrister before joining Harris Hagan in 2005. She was called to the Bar in 2005 and qualified as a solicitor in 2008.