Upper Tribunal rules Gambling Commission has power to refuse “hard gambling” licences for pubs

This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.

The Upper Tribunal has ruled that the Gambling Commission acted within its powers in refusing the pub chain, Greene King, a licence to provide commercial bingo and high stakes gaming machines in a number of its pubs.

The Commission challenged the ruling of the First-Tier Tribunal that it had exceeded its powers and thereby encroached into the proper territory of the local licensing authorities. The Commission’s position was that the law, as it currently stands, distinguishes between “low-level” gaming that is appropriate within the context of a pub, and “hard gambling” which ought to be provided on separate premises which adults “make a deliberate choice to visit in order to gamble”.

Greene King argued that this was not a case about allowing all of its pubs, or indeed every pub nationwide, to operate commercial bingo: the application only related to eight of its pubs. Further, they submitted that the relevant consideration was whether the provider of gambling services complied with the requisite regulations, not the nature of the premises in which the gambling takes place.

Rejecting Greene King’s arguments and allowing the appeal, the Upper Tribunal held that the Commission was entitled to reject an application for a licence if it was not reasonably consistent with the licensing objectives. The licensing objectives are: preventing gambling from being a source of, or associated with, crime or disorder; ensuring that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way; and protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by gambling.

Giving the judgment, Judge Howard Leveson stated that the Commission was concerned “fundamentally about the availability of high or higher-stakes gambling to those whose better judgment might be affected by alcohol” and that “primacy is to be given to the decision of the Commission on whether to grant an operating licence”.

The case has been sent back to the First-Tier Tribunal for reconsideration on the facts.