Police and Crime Commissioner Joy Allen has renewed her calls for more effective treatment for offenders with gambling addictions on the back of a major new survey.
The Gambling Survey for Great Britain, launched by the Gambling Commission, provides an unprecedented insight into gambling participation rates across the UK, the experiences and reasons for gambling and the consequences on people’s lives and those closest to them.
It found that half of the survey’s 10,000 participants had taken part in some form of gambling in the previous month, and that 2.5 per cent had struggled with problem gambling.
Furthermore, more than one in 40 who had gambled in the last year had experienced severe harm to their life such as turning to crime to finance gambling.
As the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners’ (APCC) Joint Addictions Lead, the PCC has fought vigorously for tougher regulation of the industry to hold the sector to account for the consequences of gambling harm, including lobbying for improved betting rules to protect problem gamblers and safeguard children from being drawn into gambling addiction.
She has also spearheaded sweeping local reforms in Durham which saw the force become the first in the country to sign up to the Gambling Charter. This agreement set out the Constabulary’s commitment to work collaboratively to tackle gambling harm in the workplace and wider community.
Commissioner Allen said: “The evidence from this survey reinforces previous research that for a small minority of people, gambling is a source of significant harm to both themselves, and others.
“It is imperative we take proactive action, rather than reacting to these problems once they become out of control and harm our wider communities. This means doing more to identify, assess and refer offenders with gambling problems into treatment and other support services and rolling out increased protections across the industry to minimise the risk of vulnerable people, including children, developing gambling problems in the first place.”