Affordability checks will be evaluated 'in the real world' despite calls for a pause in their implementation

Click here to add us to your Google preferred sources or find out more here

A senior Gambling Commission executive has said that affordability checks cannot be evaluated until they have been implemented, in response to criticism surrounding the controversial measure and calls for it to be paused.

Tim Miller, the commission's executive director of research and policy, was speaking at a gambling conference organised by law firm CMS in London on Tuesday which followed the resignation of a key adviser to the government on gambling policy. 

The checks, also termed financial risk assessments, could be given the green light by the Gambling Commission this month following a lengthy pilot, despite the turmoil surrounding the government.

On Monday, it was revealed that James Noyes has resigned from the Gambling Act Review Evaluation Advisory Group, a panel providing advice to government and the Gambling Commission on the proposals in the 2023 white paper. He said he was astonished the checks were being rolled out "before any meaningful – and independent – evaluation of this policy can be carried out".  

Questioned about that development, Miller said he did not want to pre-empt any conversations the Gambling Commission board might have. However, he added: "What I will say is that in terms of evaluation you can't evaluate something until you have implemented it.

"Throughout we have had NatCen and others doing work to understand how that pilot has been developing but you can't properly evaluate something until it has actually been rolled out. It's the case with everything else in the white paper, you evaluate it once it's there in the real world so you can understand it."

Miller added that should the decision be made to take the checks forward it would be done "in a collaborative way with industry" and that the commission had not come to any conclusions as to how long the process would take.

He added: "So the board's next decision, the next conversation, I don't think will be the last one they have. The next board meeting has been turned into something akin to giving royal assent to a piece of legislation when it's nothing of the sort."

Miller had earlier been asked about the lack of clarity regarding the commission's demands that operators should ask customers for financial documents to prove they could afford their betting levels.

Tim Miller was asked about a lack of clarity regarding Gambling Commission's demands that operators should ask customers for financial documents

Such requests had been detailed in the commission's compliance and enforcement report 2019 to 2020 but Miller said that report had been published "a long time ago".

He said: "I think we're in a place now where we shouldn't need to have to rely upon things like payslips and things like that in 2026.

"Whatever happens with financial risk assessments, one of the things we are seeking to try and do with that is create a system where actually you can eliminate a large proportion, if not the majority, of the situations where you do need to be asking for that sort of information because it is clear consumers don't want documents checked. I do think we need to do all we can to remove that friction from the system."

Miller said it was also incumbent upon the regulator to develop very clear guidance "so that both the operator and compliance teams have got the shared understanding of what these mean in practice".

He added: "If we do decide at some point to move ahead with financial risk assessments it is to jointly create what that guidance looks like so that up front questions and uncertainties that operators would have can be resolved." 

Read these next:

Astonishing and unacceptable: key DCMS adviser quits in disgust over plan to roll out affordability checks 

Flutter chief executive Peter Jackson calls on Gambling Commission to 'think again' about affordability checks 

A question of trust: should the Gambling Commission be allowed to mark its own homework on affordability checks? 

Sign up to receive On The Nose, our essential daily newsletter, from the Racing Post. Your unmissable morning feed, direct to your email inbox every morning.