Gambling license reviews in 2025
Request
I request the following information with regards to the 2025 Calendar Year.
- How many gambling license reviews were commenced in that year?
- Of those reviews, how many have not already (to the date of this email) resulted in the Commission issuing its preliminary finding letter?
- Of the cases identified in question 2, what are the dates that each review was commenced?
- Of the cases identified in question 1 where the preliminary finding letter has been issued:
- What was the mode average time (to the nearest week) between the commencement of the review and the issuing of the preliminary findings?
- What was the longest time between the two events?
NB If you wish to provide a table of commencement and letter dates for each instance, I am more than happy to do the calculations to determine the information requested.
Response
During 2025 the Gambling Commission opened 145 regulatory investigations. A regulatory investigation can result in:
- A 116 review (the information referenced in your request)
- An expedited fine
- An advice letter
- No further action
Of the 145 cases opened in 2025, some are still ongoing.
I can confirm that information falling within the scope of your request is held by the Gambling Commission. However, this information is not held in an easily extractable format. Therefore, each of the 145 cases would need to be reviewed manually in order to identify the information you’re requesting.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for public authorities, such as the Commission, is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
When a public authority applies the Section 12 exemption to a request, the FOIA guidance specifically states that a public authority should avoid providing any information found as a result of a search as it denies the requestor the right to express a preference as to which parts of the request they may wish to receive within the appropriate time limit. The section 12 exemption is therefore engaged to the entirety of a request if applied, and as a result information cannot be partially disclosed.
In order to locate, retrieve and extract all of the information requested for the time period stated within your request, staff would be required to conduct a manual review across Commission storage areas to firstly find the information and then to identify if it falls within the scope of your request. In line with Information Commissioner Office (ICO) guidance, we do not have to search up to the appropriate limit if we have identified that the section 12 exemption is engaged.
If you are able to refine your request, for example a shorter date range, we may be able to narrow the number of records that we need to search.
Until we are able to process the search of the information you have requested, we are unable to ascertain if other exemptions will apply to any material identified which would also prevent disclosure.
Please note, any refined request would be processed as a new request and the 20 working day statutory time limit would apply.
Review of the decision
If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your Freedom of Information request you are entitled to an internal review of our decision. You should write to FOI Team, Gambling Commission, 4th floor, Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, B2 4BP or by reply to this email.
Please note, internal review requests should be made within 40 working days of the initial response. Requests made outside this timeframe will not be processed.
If you are not content with the outcome of our review, you may then apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have already exhausted the review procedure provided by the Gambling Commission.
It should be noted that if you wish to raise a complaint with the ICO about the Commission’s handling of your request for information, then you are required to do so within six weeks of receiving your final response or last substantive contact with us.
The ICO can be contacted at: The Information Commissioner’s Office (opens in new tab), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Information Management Team
Gambling Commission
Internal Review Request
Thank you for the information you have supplied.
I request an internal review of the decision, as your answer appears to be an attempt prohibited by section 77(1) of the FOIA here is why.
I asked for 4 pieces of information.
You have, in your refusal to answer any of the questions, actually answered the first question, IE there were 145 reviews.
I would be reasonable and in compliance with section 16 to answer questions 2 and 3
While I must currently accept your explanation that the information requested in question 4 must be accessed from the individual licence record the number of those records to be accessed to provide the information could be as low as 1, which would not justify your section 12 estimation.
I submit that the Commission has demonstrated that it holds an easily accessible record that 145 reviews were commenced in 2025, that is to say, it did not have to manually access every current license, to determine if a review had been commenced on it in that year. As a result, it is evident that there is an enforcement aspect to its filterable database, ie a data field for 'licence review commencement' which is filterable by date and has returned 145 results for review commencement between 1.1.2025 and 31.12.2025.
As part of the Commissions KPI's are how effectively they deal with licence reviews, it does not make sense that the Commission would create that data field without creating an associated data field for 'preliminary findings letter issued' which is also filterable by date. To maintain such a position would be asserting that the Commission can easily establish whether and when a review has been commenced but not whether or when that review has been completed and the outcome of that review.
I submit that in light of your answering of question 1, under section 16 the Commission is obliged to provide the information requested in questions 2 and 3, and that information once provided may or may not justify the reliance on section 12 for refusal to provide the information requested in question 4. That is to say that if 145 of the identified cases have not had a preliminary findings letter issued by the time of the request the Commission's position may be justified, but if that figure is one or two, it is clearly not.
If, on consideration of this review you do not change your position, I request the following information:
Did the Commission manually check all current licences issued to establish that 145 licence reviews were commenced in 2025?
Does the Commission operate a computer database that records the date of commencement of a licence review?
Does the Commission operate a computer database that allowed an operator to establish, by the use of data filters, that 145 of the licence reviews it has commenced were commenced in 2025?
Does the Commission operate a computer database that records the date of the issue of a licence review preliminary findings letter to a licensee?
Does the Commission operate a computer database that records the date of the issue of a final decision letter to a licensee?
Does the Commission operate a computer database that records the outcome of a license review?
Internal Review Response
I am writing to you further to your Freedom of Information request dated 05/02/2026 which we responded to on 05/03/2026, and your subsequent request for an internal review received on 06/03/2026.
We have now concluded our review and our findings are detailed below.
This internal review was conducted by someone who was not involved in the processing of your original request.
In your initial email you requested the following information with regards to the 2025 calendar year:
- How many gambling license reviews were commenced in that year?
- Of those reviews, how many have not already (to the date of this email) resulted in the Commission issuing its preliminary finding letter?
- Of the cases identified in question 2, what are the dates that each review was commenced?
- Of the cases identified in question 1 where the preliminary finding letter has been issued:
- What was the mode average time (to the nearest week) between the commencement of the review and the issuing of the preliminary findings?
- What was the longest time between the two events?
Please note that you have referred to our ‘145 Regulatory Investigations’ as ‘Licence Reviews’ within your request. The Gambling Commission must ensure that it is made clear that these are Regulatory Investigations and not just licence reviews.
In our initial response, we advised that during 2025 the Gambling Commission opened 145 regulatory investigations. However, although the Commission does hold information falling within the scope of your request, this information is not stored in an easily extractable format. Section 12 of the Freedom of Information At 2000 (FOIA) was therefore applied, which makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for public authorities, such as the Commission, is set at £450, or in excess of 18 hours.
In your appeal, you have questioned why the number of cases opened during 2025 was provided to you when the remaining information was exempt from disclosure.
Internal Review
Breakdown of workload estimate
Section 12(1) allows a public authority to refuse to comply with a request where it is estimated that the cost of compliance would exceed a set amount, otherwise referred to as the appropriate limit. Such costs include, but are not limited to, staff time for searching for the requested information.
Section 12(2) depicts that a public authority must inform the applicant whether the information that they have requested is held, unless confirming this would exceed the appropriate limit. As previously mentioned, section 12(3) advises that different public authorities can adopt different cost limits. For the Commission, our cost limit is £450, or in excess of 18 hours.
These limits are set out in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244 (opens in a new tab) , which are created under section 12(5). They are typically known as the ‘Fees Regulations’.
The Fees Regulations set out the limited activities that a public authority can take into account when calculating the cost of compliance:
- Determining whether we hold the information
- Locating that information or a document which may contain that information
- Retrieving the information or document containing it
- Extracting the information from a document containing it.
Regulation 4(4) states that the cost of the time which is expected to spend dealing with the request must be estimated at a rate of £25 per hour.
In our initial response, the Commission advised that we do hold some information falling within the scope of your request, indicating that the cost of compliance exceeded the limit in terms of locating, retrieving and extracting the requested information.
How we hold our records and staff costs
The estimate for working out the cost of compliance should be based on how the records are held at the time the request is submitted or up to the statutory time for compliance (20 working days). The estimate made by the Commission in relation to your request was therefore completely made up of the costs of staff time in carrying out the relevant searches to locate, retrieve and extract the relevant information as it is not held within a central location.
The configuration of the system we have, and how we record our work within it, has evolved over the years. Data fields have changed and consequently, the list of values we use within these fields to label our work have changed too. This means we cannot run a report that points to these fields enabling us to extract that data. Therefore, in order to extract the information requested, staff would be required to conduct a manual review of the 145 cases to identify if it falls within the scope of your request.
Partial Disclosure and the Duty to Advise and Assist
Section 12 of the FOIA was applied to your initial request. As previously advised, section 12(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
The section 12 exemption is therefore engaged to the entirety of a request if applied, and as a result information cannot be partially disclosed. In line with Information Commissioner Office (ICO) guidance, we do not have to search up to the appropriate limit if we have identified that the section 12 exemption is engaged. As a matter of good practice, an organisation should also avoid providing the information found through any searches already conducted and then claiming section 12 for the remainder of the information.
However, in line with section 16 FOIA requirements, if a request is refused under section 12, a public authority will usually have to provide advice to the applicant. The objective of the advice and assistance is to help the applicant make a new, refined request which does not exceed the authority’s appropriate limit.
Section 16 states as follows:
(1) It shall be the duty of a public authority to provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made, requests for information to it.
(2) Any public authority which, in relation to the provision of advice or assistance in any case, conforms with the code of practice under section 45 is to be taken to comply with the duty imposed by subsection (1) in relation to that case.
Paragraph 6.9 of the section 45 code of practice states that where a public authority does not have to comply with a request because it would exceed the appropriate limit to do so, then it: “…should consider what advice and assistance can be provided to help the applicant reframe or refocus their request with a view to bringing it within the cost limit. This may include suggesting that the subject or timespan of the request is narrowed.”
In our initial response to your request, we did consider what advice and assistance we could provide to you. During this consideration, we decided it would be of assistance to you if we provided the number of regulatory investigations opened during 2025.
We also advised that until we are able to process the search and retrieval of the information you have requested, that can be provided within the statutory time limit, we are unable to ascertain if other exemptions will apply to the material retrieved, which would also prevent disclosure. We advised that any refined request would be processed as a new request and the 20-working day statutory time limit would apply.
As previously mentioned, although the Commission does hold some information falling within the scope of your request, this information is stored across several systems and is not stored in an extractable format.
After reviewing your request and our response, we uphold our original decision to engage the section 12 exemption in relation to your request.
If you are not content with the outcome of your review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the complaints procedure provided by the Gambling Commission. The ICO can be contacted at www.ico.gov.uk or at:
Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Yours sincerely,
Information Management Team
Gambling Commission