UKGC Wants Pubs To Do More To Stop Youngsters Gambling On Machines
They’ve almost become as common-place in a public house as bottles of spirits and lager pumps, but the United Kingdom Gambling Commission is calling on the pub industry to do more to stop under-18s from accessing the gambling machines that can be found in pubs up and down the country.
Research shows that as many as 84% of them are failing to stop people under the legal age for gambling from using Category C machines, more commonly known as fruit machines.
170 pubs across England and Wales were looked at, with the percentage based on the number of those that haven’t done enough to to protect younger people from being able to gamble. Whilst the primary responsibility for ensuring the machines are regulated properly and that businesses complete age verification checks lies with the alcohol licensing authority, the Gambling Commission still believes that more could be done to protect children from the risks of gambling.
Sometimes Pub Staff Don’t Know The Rules
Children and young people under the age of 18 are not allowed to play on the Category C machines that are commonly found in pubs, with staff working there expected to stop them from doing so. There also needs to be clear signage to inform people of the age restrictions in place. Yet the investigation by the Gambling Commission seems to suggest that many of the employees of bars and pubs aren’t even aware of the restrictions when it comes to gaming machines.
Helen Rhodes, the Programme Director, believes that pubs aren’t taking the age verification rules for gambling as seriously as they do for ‘alcohol sales’, but if they don’t start doing so then they’re at risk of ‘losing their entitlement’ to offer the machines at all. It’s especially concerning for the industry given the fact that it is a legal requirement to obey the rules on the age of gamblers. It comes on the back of news that the number of underage gamblers has quadrupled in the space of two years, though that’s not all being blamed on pubs.
Things Have Improved Slightly
While 84% of pubs failing to do their duty in protecting underage gamblers isn’t great, it’s actually an improvement on last year when the results of an investigation showed that 88% weren’t doing enough.
Rhodes referred to those results as ‘disappointing’ but also pointed out that the Gambling Commission has done more to support local authorities in order to ‘raise standards’. Included in that was assistance to trainers in order to make sure that the legal requirements around gambling machines were being emphasised.
The UKGC has also been working with the Home Office to improve things even more, adding information about gambling in public houses to the course that personal licence holders have to do. It’s hoped that by increasing this sort of thing pubs will be more aware of what is up to them to do around the issues of gambling in pubs.
Given that many machines offer quiz games and so on, it might be confusing for staff members when it comes to figuring out which games are gambling ones and which are not.
The Industry Plans To Do Its Bit
The calls from the Gambling Commission to tighten up when it comes to underage gambling have been received well by the British Beer and Pub Association and UK Hospitality, who have launched guidance of their own around the issue. The core principles that they’ve put in place are as follows:
- Collaboration the sector
- Ensuring that staff understand their responsibilities
- Co-operation with both the regulatory bodies and the enforcement bodies
- Increased engagement with the Gambling Commission
- Supporting the work of charities like GambleAware
The Chief Executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, Brigid Simmonds, said that they wanted to ensure that the pub remains a ‘safe and friendly environment for families’. With that in mind, they’ve taken the concerns raised by the Gambling Commission seriously, updating their charter and code of practice accordingly.
Kate Nicholls, meanwhile, spoke as the Chief Executive of UK Hospitality and said that pubs are places in which it’s safe to relax, ‘by and large’. She did confess, though, that pubs can obviously do more to ‘tackle under-age gambling’. Both Nicholls and Simmonds made reference to the fact that gambling machines are a ‘vital revenue stream’, with Nicholls declaring, “we need to ensure that standards on this issue are as high as they are in every other aspect of pubs”.
Pub Machines Not Regulated By UKGC Directly
Speaking on behalf of the Gambling Commission, Helen Rhodes said:
“We urge the pub sector to respond to this opportunity to protect children and young people and to prevent the need for local authorities to take enforcement action”
It can obviously be seen as something of a veiled threat, with the implication being that local authorities will be called upon more regularly to monitor the situation if pubs can’t deal with it themselves. That’s something that both UK Hospitality and the BBPA would want to avoid, given that more scrutiny is not necessarily good for business.
Category C machines are ones that have a maximum stake of £1 and can pay out as much as £100. Most commonly these are fruit machines in pubs, so it should be obvious for workers when someone is using them and if they look underage then they should be questioned just as when they are buying alcohol.
Despite this, the Gambling Commission isn’t responsible for regulating the machines and the regulation comes as part of their licence to sell alcohol in the first place. That means that it falls under the jurisdiction of Licensing Authorities and is therefore down the the LAs to make sure that the law is being followed.
Even so, the battle against underage gambling is one that continues to rage on, with the most recent news suggesting that as many as 450,000 people aged 11 to 15 are gambling on a weekly basis. That makes gambling more prolific among that age group than both drinking and smoking. It’s little wonder, therefore, that the Gambling Commission has decided to become a little more involved in the issue.
