Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of data provided by gambling operators on land-based gambling, including where records are not held digitally.

Land-based operators have a duty to share data with the Gambling Commission on regulatory returns. Condition 15.3.1 of the License Conditions and Codes of Practice states that ‘within 28 days of the end of each quarterly period licensees must submit an accurate Regulatory Return to the Commission’. In addition, changes to Regulatory Returns which came into effect on 1 July 2024 also require all operators, including land-based, to submit Regulatory Returns every quarter from July 2024.

The Commission also has a rigorous data quality assurance process and, where appropriate, queries all the data submitted. Quarterly updates and the full annual official industry statistics are subsequently published on the Commission’s website.