Welcome to the Gambling Commission’s fortnightly newsletter.
In this edition:
1) Kirsty Caldwell appointed as Interim Chair of Industry Forum 2) Civil case against Commission dismissed 3) Signposting to GambleAware resources and transfer of ownership
4) Understanding the consumer landscape in free draws and prize competitions
5) GSGB Year 2 raw data now available to download
6) ICE Barcelona 2026 - Tim Miller speech
1) Kirsty Caldwell appointed as Interim Chair of Industry Forum
The Gambling Commission is pleased to announce the appointment of Kirsty Caldwell as the Interim Chair of the Industry Forum.
Kirsty has been a member of the Forum since March 2024 and will serve as Interim-Chair whilst recruitment begins to appoint a substantive Chair to succeed Nick Rust, whose term as Chair ended in November 2025.
3) Signposting to GambleAware resources and transfer of ownership
To support a smooth transition to the new levy system and ensure that those at risk of or who are experiencing gambling harms can continue to access tools and support, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) - as prevention commissioner under the levy - will take ownership of the GambleAware website.
The OHID will keep the GambleAware website temporarily live when GambleAware ceases operations on 31 March 2026. This will be for a period of at least 12 months (until at least March 2027) as OHID intends to transition from the GambleAware website to a newly developed digital prevention offer, funded via the levy, in the future.
4) Understanding the consumer landscape in free draws and prize competitions
On 22 January we published a report on understanding the consumer landscape in free draws and prize competitions, most commonly known as prize draws.
Triangulating data across three different data sources, including the Gambling Survey for Great Britain, open banking data and web traffic statistics, we aimed to better understand who participates in free draws and prize competitions, if and how they gamble, and how this activity fits into the broader consumer landscape.
By doing so, we can deepen our understanding of the world around the gambling sector and improve our insight into consumer behaviours that may share characteristics with gambling.
The dataset for the 2nd Annual Report of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) collected in 2024, is now available to download for users registered with the UK Data Service.
