The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill received Royal Assent on 29 April giving local authorities the power to override the Aim to Permit protection through Gambling Impact Assessments, and in turn placing the burden on AGC and Bingo operators to prove themselves fit for the high street. The problem is the licensing officials institute, the industry, gambling experts, lawyers and other key stakeholders all believe the GIAs are unworkable and will push councils into a legal and costly minefield.
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is now an Act of Law following a late intervention of Lords and backbench MP madness which pushed through Amendment 305, the clause which will allow local authorities to base licensing decisions on Gambling Impact Assessments.
The legislation will give councils the power to effectively counteract the Aim to Permit principle, enabling licensing bodies to “adopt, and act in accordance with, policies aimed at preventing the grant of gambling licences.”
What was a protection for businesses from fiefdom-like local councillors is no longer on the statute, ironically taken down by the very kind of politician that Aim to Permit was originally trying to protect local businesses from.
“So far, the default starting point when applying for a licence has been the granting of such licence,” reported SBC News. “If a local authority chooses to reject an application, it then needs to justify its reasoning with sufficient evidence, such as increased gambling risk among the population.”
“With amendment 305 coming into play, authorities will be able to create GIAs for one or more areas under their jurisdiction, where they can argue that the creation of more gambling premises will be problematic, again using evidence of local harm and cumulative impact on residents.”
The saving grace in all of this mess, is not just that these local councillors lack the intelligence to formulate a workable GIA – stupidity is not a condition that would rule people out of local office. The actual problem is that it is almost impossible for a GIA to be formulated at all – the evidence on gambling harm in local areas does not exist.
It’s the argument put forward by bodies such as the Institute of Licensing and all the leading independent lawyers who have been commissioned to examine the process.
And why are the GIAs unworkable? You need to go back to the source of the concept which was introduced following pressure from local councils and MPs who had stepped up their campaign against the “proliferation of AGCs” in recent years – a numbers game that simply doesn’t stand up to any of the Gambling Commission statistics.
However, the amendment itself updates the Gambling Act 2005 to “enable licensing authorities to adopt, and act in accordance with, policies aimed at preventing the grant of gambling licences in order to respond to (a) the cumulative impact of multiple gambling premises or (b) other reasons relating to the licensing objectives in that Act.”
Evidence your way through that.
Originally published on Coinslot on May 11, 2026. Republished with permission.