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The UK Gambling Commission will begin its series of consultations relating to the April gambling white paper with four this month, including one on affordability checks.
By the end of July, the regulator will publish consultation documents on financial risk and vulnerability checks, direct marketing and cross-selling, online and smartphone game design and age verification in land-based venues, according to Tim Miller, the commission’s executive director for research and policy.
Information on the commission’s approach to vulnerability will be published soon, Miller said.
Also coming are two consultations on topics not related to the white paper: personal management licences and regulatory panels, he said.
Most consultations last 12 weeks, so the new ones are expected to end in October.
Miller also clarified the breakdown of the responsibilities of the commission versus the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS).
The DCMS will guide creation of a statutory levy on gambling, including where the money will be channelled to, while the commission will collect the levy and distribute it at the government’s direction, he said.
“The commission will also need to decide the impact of the statutory levy on any future regulatory settlements,” Miller wrote.
Last month, the commission updated its policies on so-called white-label relationships, in which licensees contract with third parties to run websites and perform many functions for them.
Fellow Gambling Commission executive Sarah Gardner recently warned that it will take “years” to implement several of the policy changes foreseen in the white paper.
“We want to get the implementation of the Gambling Act Review white paper right. And that means it’s worth taking time to do things like consultations and structured implementation timetables properly. Less haste and more speed will be our approach," she said in a recent speech at the KPMG eSummit in Gibraltar.
