UKGC Can't Track Illegal Super-Stakes Machine Investigations
Regulator withholds data on Category A slot machine cases, citing excessive costs to retrieve information from its systems.
The UK Gambling Commission has refused to provide data on investigations into illegal Category A slot machines, citing excessive costs. The response reveals that the regulator cannot easily track specific enforcement trends, raising questions about data accessibility and transparency for high-risk gambling issues.
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The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) is unable to provide historical data on the number of illegal Category A slot machine cases it has investigated, a Freedom of Information (FOI) response has revealed. The regulator stated that retrieving the information, requested for the period since January 2007, would exceed the cost and time limits permitted under law.
The response highlights a significant gap in the regulator's ability to easily quantify and report on specific types of illegal gambling activity, making it difficult for the public to assess the prevalence of the highest-risk illegal machines in Great Britain.
What are Category A Machines?
Gambling machines in the UK are categorised by stake and prize limits. Category A machines represent the highest tier, with unlimited stakes and prizes.
Crucially, these machines were intended only for the planned 'super casinos', a project that was never fully realised. As a result, there are no legally operating Category A machines in the country. The presence of any such device constitutes a serious criminal offence and a major breach of the UK's gambling framework.
The Commission's Response
The FOI request, dated 14 November 2025, asked for the number of cases involving illegal Category A machines the Commission had investigated since 2007, broken down by year.
In its refusal, the UKGC cited Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, which allows public bodies to withhold information if the cost of retrieving it exceeds £450, equivalent to 18 hours of staff time.
The Commission explained that fulfilling the request would require a manual search of "thousands of records across different systems" dating back to 2007. It noted that cases are not centrally tagged by machine type and are handled through various departments, including regulatory, enforcement, intelligence, and criminal prosecution teams.
To find the relevant information, staff would need to manually review the findings of each individual case file to see if it mentioned illegal Category A machines. The UKGC suggested the requester could submit a new, more refined request with a shorter date range to potentially bring it within the cost limit.
Significance for Consumers and Transparency
While the UKGC investigates illegal gambling, this response shows that its data management systems are not configured to easily track trends related to specific, high-risk offences like the use of illegal super-stakes machines.
For consumers, this lack of accessible data means there is no public record of how often these devices are discovered by the regulator. It obscures the scale of the problem and prevents independent analysis of the Commission's enforcement effectiveness in this specific area.
The inability to retrieve such fundamental enforcement data raises questions about the transparency of regulatory operations and the systems in place to monitor the most serious forms of illegal gambling.