UK LEGAL COMMENT
Rock, White Paper, Scissors
Northridge Law’s Melanie Ellis finally gets her hands on The Government’s White Paper and finds positive news for land-based casinos.
T 30 JUNE 2023
he Government released its White Paper “High Stakes: Gambling Reform for the Digital Age” on 27 April 2023. Despite the paper’s title indicating a focus on digital developments, the document also proposes some significant changes for the regulation of land-based
gambling. In particular, the White Paper gives positive news to casino operators, including the potential for the re-allocation of unused licences and increased numbers of gaming machines. This article focuses on those two proposals, but a number of other benefits have been put forward, including permitting betting in all casino premises and allowing casinos to offer credit to wealthy visitors from overseas.
Unused 2005 Act licences 8 small, 8 large and 1 regional casino licences were created by the Gambling Act 2005, with the local authority areas where they could be awarded chosen by the independent Casino Advisory Panel. The process began in 2006, when the Panel invited local authorities to put forward proposals to host one of the new licences. The Panel selected areas that it considered were in need of economic development and regeneration, seeking also to ensure a range of types of areas and a good geographical spread across Britain. On release of the Panel’s report Tessa Jowell, then Secretary of State for DCMS, stated that the “primary consideration for the panel throughout has been to ensure that the areas facilitate the best possible test of social impact”. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the areas providing the
best opportunities for regeneration and testing the social impact of casinos were unlikely to correlate to the areas providing the best
economic conditions for operating a profitable casino. Casino operators proved unwilling to bet on the adage “if you build it they will come” and at the present time only 7 of the licences are currently being used for an operational casino. The regional casino licence was scrapped by the incoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008, with the proposed destination of Manchester left without any new licence. The White Paper explains that the Government intends to write to
the 9 local authorities with a non-operational licence and ask them whether there is an intention to develop a casino, questioning those that wish to keep the licence on the “current position and the barriers to making progress within a reasonable time”. If satisfactory answers are not given, the Government may decide to reallocate the licence to a different local authority area. A process will be designed to allow local authorities to express an
interest in one of the licences and it appears that fresh criteria will be established to evaluate the options. However, the “regeneration” criteria is not necessarily off the table, with the White Paper noting that “local leaders of some areas without 2005 Act licences have expressed interest in a licence as a driver of regeneration”. There is no proposal to change the permitted areas for the
converted 1968 Act casino licences, so these licences will remain tied to their current licensing authority area. In addition to the 137 active casinos, this also includes around 49 dormant licences. It seems unlikely that the Government will consider moving or reallocating these licences in the future, rather it is more likely that additional 2005 Act licences would be made available, at some point after the reallocation of those that are currently unused.
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