Gambling - Commission publish list of approved RET organisations

As from the 1^st January 2020 Gambling operators must direct an annual financial contribution for gambling research, prevention and treatment required by the LCCP SR code 3.1.1 to one or more of the organisation approved by the Commission.

 Operators must:

• make an annual financial contribution to each of research, prevention and treatment
• ensure that these donations go to one or more organisation on the list below
• ensure that they have no connection to the recipient organisation
• report information accurately in their annual or quarterly regulatory return to the Commission about the destination(s) of their payment and the amounts that have been contributed. This includes ensuring that there is no duplication of data across multiple licences.

The contribution(s) therefore must cover all three areas research, prevention and treatment. Operators may make contributions to other organsiations however only docnations to approved organisations will count towards satisfying the code. 

The current approved list only includes three organisations and only one, GambleAware, would satisfy the ‘research’ element.  This means that all Operators will have to make a contribution to Gambleaware to satisfy the LCCP SR requirement. 

The current approved list is:

Organisations seeking to be added to the list must undergo an approval process with the Commission to assess their suitability.

Notable absences from the current approved list are Epic Risk Management who commented in a tweet that the application process was only released to them (Epic) the week before Christmas.  The Gordon Moody Association also commented on their absence from the list, despite having submitted the required information. 

We may therefore expect that the list will grow in the near future.