Gambling Commission publishes its response to the Summer 2023 Consultation

Today the Gambling Commission has published its response to the Summer 2023 Consultation on proposed changes to the LCCP and RTS.

The changes are due to come into effect at varying times, with the earliest change implemented from the 30 August 2024.

A summary of the changes can be seen below:

Remote Direct Marketing

Operators will need to provide customers with options to opt-in to the product type they wish to receive marketing on. Crucially this change applies to the online sector only, and will come into force on 17 January 2025. The Commission had consulted on applying the provisions to all Licensees, but are implementing with land-based and lottery not included.

Age Verification

New rules will come into force meaning that all land-based licensees must carry out age verification testing, and that premises should operate a challenge 25 policy rather than a challenge 21. The changes will be implemented to the LCCP on 30 August 2024.

Personal Management Licences

The Commission have extended and clarified the management roles that the Commission expect to hold a personal management licence, the changes will come into force on 30 November 2024.

Financial Vulnerability Checks

Light touch financial vulnerability checks will be implemented for customers with a net deposit of more than £150 a month on gambling. These checks will focus on data available publicly and will not require operators to consider individual details such as postcode or job title. These checks will initially come into force at £500 a month from 30 August 2024, before reducing to £150 a month from 28 February 2025. These provisions apply to remote operators only.

Financial Risk Assessments

The Commission will carry out a pilot to test the details of a ‘frictionless assessment’, where the Commission will work with credit agencies and other gambling businesses to examine the potential customer impact. The Commission will explore the exact financial threshold that the assessments will be conducted at. As this is a pilot test, the assessments will not be  live and will not impact a customers credit rating. The pilot will commence at the end of August 2024, and a decision will be made before 2025 as to full live implementation.

Remote Games Design

New rules will come into play that will ban:

• autoplay
• audio or visual celebrations of returns less than or equal to stake
• operator-led functionality which facilitates playing multiple simultaneous products such as roulette and blackjack tables
• casino games spin speeds of less than 5 seconds

These changes will come into force on 17 January 2025.

The full response from the Commission can be seen here.