Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of a geographic concentration of higher-stake gaming machines in deprived communities on people in those areas.

While the Government recognises that in England, gambling premises are more likely to be situated in the most deprived areas, we do not hold official data on the relationship between deprivation and the geographic concentration of higher-stake gaming machines.

The Prime Minister’s recent announcement that we intend to revoke the ‘aim to permit’ is a step further in the government's aim to give local people a real say over what businesses can open in their town centres and how their streets should look. This will allow councils to make decisions that take into account local circumstances such as geographic concentration and deprivation. The government will consult on these changes and further details of the consultation will be published in due course.

In addition to consulting on the ‘aim to permit’, the government also intends to proceed with the commencement of Gambling Impact Assessments (GIAs), introduced through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. GIAs will strengthen the power of licensing authorities to reject applications for new gambling premises, by designating certain areas where the grant of a premises licence is “not likely to be reasonably consistent with one or more of the licensing objectives” given the cumulative impact of licences in an area, or for any other reason. We will consider the role of GIAs in a new licensing regime as part of the government's forthcoming consultation.