British regulator calls for licence fee review
Gambling Commission says fee structure in need of review as it looks to recoup costs associated with new remote licensing regime
Great Britain’s regulatory body is looking to change the fees it charges licensed operators and suppliers in order to more accurately reflect its expanded scope and related costs.
According to the Commission, a review of the fee structure is required so that government can “take account of the significant changes in the population of operators that we regulate” and address “identified problems in the current fees structure”, although said this would not necessarily result in a fee increase.
In order to kick-off the process, the regulator yesterday published a discussion paper in which it outlined a number of ways in which the current fee framework could be amended, including changes to licence categories and the establishment of formula to regularly calculate an appropriate fee rate.
The Commission said it would use industry feedback from the discussion paper to influence the advice it plans to present to the government later this year but made clear it would be recommending a change in fees in order to adjust for costs.
“The purpose of this discussion document is to explain our approach to recovering costs through licence fees, our current thinking on how the fees structure can be improved, and the implications of the 2014 Act on our costs, income and therefore on the fees needed to recover those costs; and to invite comments to help us prepare our advice on these issues to government,” the Commission said.
The Commission said exactly how much fees would need to be altered will be assessed after the regime has been active for one year to give it a “clearer picture of the immediate impacts” on costs and income, while it also cited the proposed self-exclusion system as another potential “significant cost” which needed to be factored in.
The new licensing regime, which went live on 1 November, has seen the number of Commission-licensed operators and rise to approximately 170, while roughly 150 B2B providers applied for the new software supplier licence which came into effect in the spring.
Any subsequent changes to the fee structure are unlikely to be implemented until 2017 at the earliest.
The closing date to submit comments and feedback on the discussion paper is 27 October.