The UK Gambling Commission has launched a new panel of advisors who will use their lived experience to advise the regulator on its work.
The panel met for the first week in February and is a continuation of the Experts by Experience group. This was an interim group formed in 2020 that sent evidence, advice, and recommendations to the UKGC.
The new body is called the Lived Experience Advisory Panel and will bring those with direct experience of the harms that gambling can cause into the gambling regulatory process.
Among its members are those who have themselves suffered from gambling harms and those who have been affected by harms suffered as a result of gambling by people close to them.
The panel’s aim is to advise on policies and to help make gambling safer.
They will play a role in the UK GC’s Gambling Act Review, which is expected to presage major changes in the UK gambling industry.
The Chief Executive of the UK GC is Neil McArthur. He said:
“The establishment of this group is a great step forward for us in our work in making gambling safer and building our understanding of harm and its impacts. As already proven by the input of the Interim Group, the views and perspectives of Lived Experience in our decision making is invaluable and is already having a positive impact in our work in addressing gambling-related harm.”
William Moyes, the chair of the Gambling Commission added:
“I welcome today’s announcement of the permanent Lived Experience Advisory Panel, which is a positive step towards better understanding harms caused by gambling. By collaborating with those with lived experience, friends, families and communities we can make faster progress to reduce gambling harms.”
The panel itself has issued a statement welcoming its formation by the UK GC and looking forward to “working together as a group to make progress in tackling gambling harm.”
This is the third specialist panel advising the UK GC, joining the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling and the Digital Advisory Panel.
Widespread changes are expected for the UK Gambling industry in 2021. A string of high profile stories about gambling harms has been accompanied by a massive increase in the visibility of online gambling. There is pressure on politicians to do more to help gamblers stay safe online, to advise young people about gambling and to protect them for its dangers, and to break the link between gambling and the UK’s most popular sporting teams.
A ban on advertising is the most likely outcome of the UK GC’s review. However, the regulator is already taking other actions. At the start of February, slots regulations were changed to outlaw several features, including auto-play features, to slow down games, and to remove some presentational features that are said to mislead players about how they doing and how much control they have over games.
The slots changes will be put in place in October of this year, and whatever the UK GC decides in its review will apply to all UK-available casino sites.
