POV: Burnham’s Betting Shop Attack (Jon Bryan)

Gambling writer and poker player JON BRYAN responds to the news that councils will get more powers to block new betting shops, under government plans aimed at improving high streets, from Andy Burnham.

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Sometimes, I wonder if Andy Burnham and his new government understand what’s going on in the world. His latest announcements on gambling and the high street seem to ignore the current context. The developments taking place are apparent to anyone who has bothered to look at the data, but it’s like Burnham has absolutely no idea what the trends have been. This makes you question what he is trying to do, and what his intentions really are.

Last month, there was an announcement by Betfred that they are closing a significant number of betting shops. This is an acceleration of a trend that has been going on for some time, as the number of betting shops has continued to drop over the last few years.

The recent cause for the decline is quite simple: tax increases on gambling, which Rachel Reeves announced last November, and that took effect this April. The Betting and Gaming Council has said that since last year’s budget ‘around 4,500 jobs have been lost across the betting and gaming sector, while more than 540 betting shops have closed since November’. None of this is good news for the high street, for employment figures, and for anyone who cares about gambling.

So, with all this knowledge about the impact of current gambling regulations at his fingertips, why does Andy Burnham see the need to introduce something more? He surely knows these new policies will hammer both the gambling industry and gamblers, so perhaps he just doesn’t like the sector and the people who use it. His statement that he wants to stop the rise in betting shops is just bizarre, unless he is using 1961 as the starting point. He wants to stop a rise which just isn’t taking place, according to the data, so what on earth is he talking about?

On top of this, Burnham is also talking about ‘putting communities back in control,’ and he wants to abolish a key part of the Gambling Act which references the well-worn phrase: ‘aim to permit’. This has been a guiding principle for councils when it comes to reviewing a planning application for a betting shop or an Adult Gaming Centre (AGC) over the last 20 years.
By scrapping this, the government is overturning something which has stood since the Gambling Act of 2005, introduced by a government that Burnham was part of.

It was not considered necessary to change ‘aim to permit’ throughout the Gambling Review which began in 2020, and nor was it part of the 2023 Gambling White Paper – widely accepted as the way forward for the foreseeable future by those associated with gambling. Abolishing ‘aim to permit’ wasn’t part of Starmer’s plan for gambling regulation, and it didn’t feature in the Labour Party Manifesto for 2024. Why then, is it up for the chop now? And how did we reach this stage?

It’s all very well Burnham coming along with new ideas for how to change the country, but it’s a very anti-democratic way of doing it. Our new Prime Minister is implementing a whole series of changes with his announcements over the last few weeks (including this one on gambling centres on the high street) and doing it without facing any real challenge or proper scrutiny. He hasn’t bothered with any sort of election (save for the one where a tiny portion of the country got to have their say within Makerfield), and he didn’t even face any challenge from within his own party.

He might mean business, but he is not making himself accountable to anyone, and he is ignoring the very principles upon which leaders are supposed to govern.

Regarding the specific policies that Burnham’s government has announced about gambling centres and the high street, it is not easy, at this stage, to quantify what impact those policies will have. However, it is difficult to see anything but a declining number of jobs in the gambling sector and fewer places to gamble.

If Burnham and his government continue the path that they are setting out on, it won’t show that he is listening to the workers in betting shops, or the punters who gamble there. His upcoming tour of Britain, I’m sure won’t take him to speak to any of those. It will show that he is listening to anti-gambling voices, and ones which have no idea of the data.

It will become even harder to open up a new betting shop or AGC, and there will be mounting pressure on those that are open to close. That pressure won’t just be economic, it will be political pressure too.

One fears the worst about our new Prime Minister. There are lots of things pointing to him having an intense dislike of gambling, and that he is taking the chance to do what he wants to do – crush it.

There’s no evidence that he wants to see a thriving gambling industry and there’s everything pointing to the opposite.
So much for him being the king of the north and a man of the people. He is proving that he is nothing of the sort.

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Jon Bryan is a Gambling Writer and recreational Poker Player who writes regularly on his Substack. Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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