Gambling - Code For Responsible Gambling and Player Protection

The Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) has today launched the betting industry’s new ‘Code for Player Protection and Responsible Gambling’ which will bring forward a range of measures, voluntarily, that are designed to help minimise gambling related harm.

At this juncture we should add that the Code will cover the whole of Great Britain and not just England and Wales as being reported on the BBC website and elsewhere. Scotland of course is covered by the Gambling Act 2005.

According to the ABB, it is intended that the Code will lead to “a step change in responsible gambling thinking based around informed choice by adult customers, implementing new consumer protection measures that will make a difference”.

In particular there is a new “Harm Minimisation Strategy” which will focus on improving performance at four levels of harm minimisation:

• Issuing clearer and more accessible information on how to gamble responsibly and highlighting the sources of help available;
• Providing customers with new tools such as mandatory time and money based reminders, the ability to set spend and time limits on gaming machines and to request machine session data;
• Training staff to detect the signs of potential problem gambling more quickly and how to interact more effectively with those identified; and
• Undertaking more consistent central analysis of data to identify abnormal activity both in specific shops and, where possible, that relating to individual customers.

So what impact will this have on Gamblers?

• Gamblers in Great Britain will be able to set their own limits on time and money spent on high-stakes gaming machines in betting shops.
• There will also be mandatory alerts on the fixed-odds betting machines after spending £250 or 30 minutes. 

The mandatory alerts will be installed in the estimated 33,000 machines throughout Britain, allowing alerts to staff when financial limits are reached and forcing customers to have a 30-second break.

The full report can be viewed clicking here.