The Assistant Chief Executive – Legal and Regulatory Services submitted a report, which advised the Committee of the report that would be referred to both Cabinet and Council, seeking approval of the Council’s Statement of Licensing Principles for gambling premises to cover the period 2016-2019, a draft of which was attached at Appendix A to the report.

The report gave some background information, and the Licensing and Registration Officer shared information with Members regarding this, following which, she explained that the Statement of Licensing principles had been re-drafted to reflect changes to the Fifth Edition of the Guidance published by the Gambling Commission, as well as an update to the Council’s proposed corporate priorities. In addition, there were minor updates to the policies relating to motorway service area premises etc, at Section 3.1 of the report, and to provisional applications which were set out in Section 3.9.1 of the report.

In addition, an Officer review of current premises and complaints was undertaken to establish if there were any local or area-based concerns which would merit a change of policy.  Seven complaints were received in the three year period preceding the review, the majority of which related to the siting of machines in non-authorised premises, but no trends or area specific concerns have been identified. As a result, no major policy changes were proposed at this time, but the authority may review its Gambling Policy at any time should local circumstances change.

The Licensing and Registration Officer then referred to the sub-paragraph entitled Social Responsibility (ie para 4.3), and the fact that the Gambling Commission was responsible for publishing the general licence conditions and codes of practice, and that certain new conditions had been introduced, the majority of which came into effect in May 2015, with further provisions coming into effect in April 2016. These related to licensees being required to assess the local risks to the licensing objectives posed by the provision of gambling facilities at each of their premises, and to have policies, procedures and control measures in place to mitigate those risks.  The proposed amendments were set out in Section 3, Appendix A and identified the issues which the Council would expect operators to address within risk assessments.

In addition, she explained that the responses from the consultation were as detailed in paragraphs 4.4 of the report.

These were from The Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG), who had proposed that the maximum stake be reduced to £2 along with other measures to mitigate problem gambling.

A summary of the concerns forwarded to the Council were attached at Appendix B to the report, whilst Appendix C contained a response from Grosschalks Solicitors, who had submitted a response on behalf of the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB).

This response raised a number of points relating to the draft statement which were dealt with both in the report and the Draft Statement of Principles.

The Licensing and Registration Officer then responded to a number of routine questions from Members, following which the Committee

RESOLVED                           That the report be noted, as well as the proposed amendments to the Statement of Licensing Principles which would in turn be forwarded to cabinet for information purposes and to Council for formal approval.