UKGC Withholds Data on Major Operator Collapse Losses
Regulator cites excessive cost to retrieve information on gambling firm failures where consumer losses exceeded £20 million.
A Freedom of Information request for details on the largest gambling operator collapses has been refused by the UK Gambling Commission. The regulator stated it would exceed cost limits to identify cases from the last decade where consumer losses topped £20 million, raising questions about the tracking of major consumer harm events.
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Regulator Unable to Easily Track Largest Consumer Loss Events
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed that the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) does not maintain easily accessible records on the most significant financial losses suffered by consumers following the collapse of a licensed gambling operator.
In a request dated 24 May 2022, the UKGC was asked to provide details of operator collapses over the last 10 years where the total financial loss to customers exceeded £20 million. The requested information included the operator's name, date of collapse, the number of customers affected, and the total value of lost funds.
The Commission refused the request, stating that retrieving the information would be too costly and time-consuming.
Why This Data Matters to Consumers
When a gambling company becomes insolvent, any money held in customer accounts is at risk. UKGC licence conditions require operators to inform customers about their level of funds protection: Not Protected, Medium, or High. Data on historical losses provides a crucial real-world measure of how effective these protections are and the scale of financial risk consumers face.
Without access to this data, it is difficult for consumers, researchers, and policymakers to assess the frequency and severity of major operator failures and the subsequent harm to the public.
Details of the FOI Refusal
The UKGC confirmed that it does hold some of the requested information, which would have been supplied by operators regarding their customer liabilities before entering liquidation. However, it invoked Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which allows public bodies to refuse requests if the cost of fulfilling them exceeds a set limit.
For the Commission, this limit is £450, which equates to approximately 18 hours of staff time. The regulator explained its reasoning:
"We do not categorise our case files in such a way that we can easily extract this data... identifying the information you have requested would still require a manual review of all relevant cases and supporting information, from across several areas of the organisation."
Essentially, the UKGC stated that it has no central or searchable database to track the most severe instances of consumer losses from operator insolvency. To find the data would require manually checking a high volume of individual case files.
Significance for Regulatory Transparency
The refusal highlights a significant gap in the public availability of data concerning major consumer protection failures. While the UKGC collects information on customer liabilities during an operator's collapse, its filing systems are not designed to easily monitor or report on the cumulative impact of these events.
This lack of accessible data means that a comprehensive picture of the financial damage caused by the largest operator failures in recent history remains unavailable to the public. The Commission did suggest that a more narrowly focused request might be fulfilled, but as it stands, a full accounting of collapses resulting in losses over £20 million is deemed too resource-intensive for the regulator to provide.