© BBC The commission wants the States to underwrite the costs of a facility to help people who are addicted

The chairman of the body that oversees gambling says the lack of support for those addicted is “depressing”.

Advocate Cyril Whelan said in the annual report of the Gambling Commission that repeated requests “to a Jersey public authority well-placed to assist received no reply”.

Gambling “cost lives” but “receives insufficient attention”, he said.

The commission wants the States to underwrite the costs of a facility to help people who are addicted.

Mr Whelan said: “With depressing regularity I look back on the previous year, and find little improvement in the delivery of specialist problem gambling treatment in the island.”

His report also said that communication between the commission and the government had strengthened during the last year.

He said the treatment service could exist “if the funding initiatives of the commission were to be underwritten – not paid – by government”.

Deputy Kirsten Morel, Economic Development Minister, said: “Gambling addiction can hurt the individual and their families enormously but what we don’t have at the moment is a sense of the scale of the issue in Jersey.

“Once we understand the scale we can design services appropriate to that scale.”

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