Key points:
- The OSR has submitted official recommendations to the Gambling Commission pertaining to the improvement of the GSGB
- The OSR review, requested by the commission, underlines nine specific areas for the potential improvement of the GSGB
The UK’s Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) has put forth a number of recommended changes to the Gambling Commission’s Gambling Survey of Great Britain (GSGB) as part of its recently conducted compliance review of the survey.
Indeed, this action comes following the commission’s request for a review into its GSGB initiative by the OSR, to help refine the statistics gathered on the UK market as part of the survey on an annual basis. It had already been revealed via a recent update from the Gambling Commission that several incentives are set to be introduced following the OSR survey. Now however, the OSR has submitted nine officially specified recommendations for areas of improvement with regard to the transparency, potential biases and guidance of the GSGB.
The nine recommendations are as follows;
To put together a more thorough and comprehensive improvement plan for the implementation of Professor Sturgis’ recommendations, for the Gambling Commission to enhance its validation and quality assurance processes and for the regulator to enhance the communication of any potential biases in the GSGB.
Elsewhere, it has been recommended that the commission undertake a more thorough approach to the investigation of GSGB statistics via relevant external data. Specifically, comparisons have been recommended to be drawn against the Health Survey for England and the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey.
The inception of a GSGB user engagement strategy has also been detailed as a recommendation, alongside ensuring that the commission remain open to challenges by and user feedback on contributions in order to further build user trust.
The OSR has also called for the Gambling Commission to widen its stakeholder network and partner with additional sources and official statistics producers, to publish and official communication strategy and finally to consider how it can better present the overall data moving forward to ensure it aligns with user needs and preferences.
Good to know: Last summer, the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) also voiced concerns about the methodology of the GSGB survey
Additional recent UK regulatory news saw the Gambling Commission release an official report on UK gambling harm experiences in May, with research being based on a sample of 25 interviewees. Also this month, the commission provided an update on the second stage of its financial risk assessment pilot.
