Compliance and enforcement: impact assessment

This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.

The Gambling Commission has regulatory powers to investigate whether the provisions of the Gambling Act 2005 (2005 Act), including licence conditions, codes of practice and guidance, are being complied with in order to achieve the policy objectives for gambling in Great Britain. Further to this, it has published an impact assessment on compliance and enforcement (with particular focus on the former) under the 2005 Act.

The impact assessment sets out the policy options for compliance which were considered by the Gambling Commission. It explains that the Commission would prefer to take a risk-based approach, concentrating resources on areas where intelligence suggests action is most needed and using a combination of the following methods:

1. Use information provided by operators in regulatory and other information returns to conduct a desk-based compliance regime with the Gambling Commission issuing codes of practice and guidance;
2. Carry out inspection visits to premises, including both regular announced and unannounced visits to individual premises and classes of operator; and
3. Use complaints about the industry and other intelligence to identify where compliance and enforcement action is required.

The Gambling Commission further stated that its preferred approach to enforcement was for it to recruit its own "enforcement resource" to investigate to investigate and institute proceedings both for criminal offences and regulatory breaches (e.g. codes of practices, licence conditions).

It is proposed that the policy be reviewed in October 2009 so that there is a sufficient time period during which the actual costs and benefits of the new regulatory regime can be assessed.