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This is inside the Commission, a Gambling Commission podcast.
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Welcome to Inside the Commission, a podcast all about gambling in Great Britain. Here we'll cover all the latest topics and trends from across the gambling sector, and discuss the big issues that matter to you, from consumer queries to industry insights. We'll bring you the facts from the front line of regulation and share the stats and stories from those in the know.
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For all the latest discussions and updates, you can subscribe to our Gambling Commission YouTube channel, or you can find us on your preferred platform. Wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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Hello, and welcome to Inside the Commission. A gambling Commission podcast. In this short series, we'll be exploring the commission's advisory groups and how they work and contribute to the expertise, the insight and the challenge that helps inform the work of the regulator. Today, we're focusing on the industry Forum, a group made up of representatives from across Great Britain's gambling sector providing insight on industry perspectives, what the Commission's plans are, and the wider environment, which operators work in.
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Today we're joined by the forum's interim chair, Kirsty Caldwell, along with the commission's head of secretariat, Andrew Jackson, to talk about how the forum works, the role it plays in bringing that industry insight into our regulatory conversations and also how it sits alongside the other groups that we've got. The digital Advisory Panel and the Lived Experience Advisory Panel.
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Unknown
So let's get started. Let's start with some introductions. Andrew, do you want to introduce yourself and then we'll go to Kirsty.
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Unknown
Sure. So I'm Andrew, the commission's head of secretariat. So my remit covers the, the advisory groups as you've outlined. And also supporting the commissions board.
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Unknown
And in terms of your general it a day to day.
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Unknown
What does that sort of involve then? What are you sort of having to tackle with, with especially with around the expert groups.
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Unknown
It's, it's a varied role. So no two days are the same. So we have to work with colleagues across the commission to generate work for the advisory groups. And that could be working with, finance policy strategy ups.
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Unknown
Anything really.
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Unknown
cool. And Kirsty, interim chair, that's you've been appointed that for a short while now. So, pretty big responsibility. Could you introduce yourself to, listeners, let us know a little bit about yourself?
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Unknown
Yeah. Of course. Yeah. So I'm Kirsty, I run a compliance consultancy business called Bet Smart Consulting. We've been going about six years, a couple of years ago now, I was appointed as a member of the Industry Forum group.
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Unknown
And then, yeah, as you say, got, kind of promoted, I guess you'd call it for myself, to the position of interim chair in January. So, yeah, exciting times and a lot have been going on since, that appointment was made.
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Unknown
Yeah. And since you've joined the industry for what is your experience been like? And have you found it? And, is it what you expected it to be?
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Unknown
It's a really good question. I don't know how I expected it to be, really. And I think that probably everybody within the group would say that maybe there was an element of that for you guys at the commission as well. Definitely. You know, quite unprecedented. Commission has never really worked with industry in this way before.
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Unknown
I guess one of the things that I was surprised about was the diversity of the group that, the commission put together in terms of the members. So I kind of thought it would be full of compliance people. And that isn't the case at all. You know, there's kind of 2 or 3 of us who are mainly focused on compliance in our, in our businesses, but, you know, we have different people from different parts of the sector, doing completely different roles.
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Unknown
So that's great because we get some really different perspectives that we wouldn't get if everybody was, you know, from the same background.
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Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. And and from your point of view, obviously, you've been, you know, leading on the industry for from the beginning, really. How has it been for you, what's been the sort of like the, the challenges or the, the, the wins as well in terms of the industry for a bit,
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Unknown
as a broad question.
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Unknown
So, challenges. I suppose I would say that when we, we, we have a job of coordination. So I see it as quite a practical role in bringing the work to the forum to help other colleagues so that that's the ultimate benefit that we're going for, is to have people that have that to work as a sounding board, isn't it?
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Unknown
Exactly. So, you know, what you're dealing with potentially is we have to be across all almost all the that a lot of the commission's work, which we're not that close to, but we have to have a good understanding of it to get it in front of the forum in the right way. Yeah. So you probably dealing with colleagues that aren't used to dealing with industry and aren't used to sitting in front of people from operators and present presenting their work.
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Unknown
So we have to work with them to I've overcome some of that. Other colleagues are much more comfortable with it, which is fine. But, that that's been a bit of a challenge, but, now it's been it's been really good. I think there's been a lot of, a lot of constructive dialog. And,
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Unknown
the groups are very different, aren't they. So the industry for a it's a very different view perspective to the lived experience to the, to the advisory. So you've got to sort of, you know, you've got to make sure that the colleagues within the GC know that they're getting different, always a different level of insight, a different perspective coming from each of these groups.
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Unknown
Yeah we do. We it's our job to, to bring the right people together. You mentioned the lived experience advisory panel, the, a really well established group the commission has had for several years now. Yeah. It's got a really good profile in the commission. There across a lot of our work, digital advisory panels, a bit more specialized as you'd probably expect.
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Unknown
So data digital, which is massive for the commission, but they're right across that an industry forum is a bit more of the new group really. So it's been running for the two years that I've been in this role. Yeah. And I think we've, we've, we've got it embedded in the commission. Yeah. I think the what they're doing at the moment shows that it's fully embedded in the commission.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Unknown
start with self-custody, you know, do you want to sort of share how you think the forum, the mechanics of the forum, how it works? And sort of how it links into the commission and how it provides that sort of, intelligence that comes back into for us to sort of, you know, have those regulatory conversations.
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Unknown
Yeah, sure.
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Unknown
So, I mean, we meet probably about every other month. Initially we we just kind of have remote meetings, but we decided really early on that we thought face to face was better where we could day. So, we come up to the commission's offices when we can, and we all sit in a room for kind of three, four hours,
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Unknown
Up to this point, kind of the commission is very much driven the agenda, and that's been based on, you know, which colleagues have needed, that sounding board at that particular point. I think, you know, moving forward, we want to try and get that process to be a little bit more collaborative. So there's, you know, that it's very fast paced, regulatory environment.
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Unknown
And I think there's often things that operators want to talk about, like kind of hot topics and things like that. So we're trying to look at ways to kind of, work more collaboratively and maybe start to bring some of those, operator brought agenda items into the meetings as well. But aside from the meetings I do, we've been engaging more recently with kind of, projects which take place outside of those.
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Unknown
So it may be that a commission colleague comes to the meeting and they will, you know, there will be an action for them to work directly with 2 or 3 of the members of the forum, and the best place to help them, you know, be that providing data or reviewing documents or whatever else it might be. Yeah.
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Unknown
And I think another really key one is reviewing, like things that the commission are going to publish before, it goes out. So a good example of that will be the Amr risk assessment, which is due to go out, I think, in April. John said, so yeah, there's lots of different ways that we kind of get involved and that's evolving and developing all the time, which I think is really good and shows that you know, we're moving forward
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Unknown
in itself and in terms of the general form, how it functions.
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Unknown
Yeah. So Kirsty's right. In terms of how we made, I guess the one point I'd make is when I took this role, there was a lot of formality around the groups and how they met, which works some of the time, but I wanted to move away from that at the time and make it a bit more agile.
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Unknown
So, you know, sometimes the format of three hour meetings is fine when that's needed, but it's not always needed. Someone we've got when we've got really specific pieces of work that need the insight from any of our groups. I want to make sure that the groups are running the match all the way to to, to make quickly and maybe not all of the group, maybe just some select individuals that are best suited to work on it.
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Unknown
And that's that's worked really well.
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Unknown
Yeah. In terms of like in the the commission does a lot of engagement outside the industry for with the industry a lot. We've got a lot of meetings, engage with events. We have that sort of 1 to 1 time with operators.
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Unknown
How does that forum and that sort of engagement work together. Are they a they sort of two separate tracks or is there quite a bit of linkages. What what we get from or what we hear from outside of the forum in terms of I met with industry and
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Unknown
I'll give you that first.
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Unknown
Yes. I think that that's a really good question as well. I think one point that I, I want to make clear and I think potentially there's some confusion about this point, within the wider industry is that, you know, we're not a trade body, we're not competing with the trade bodies. We're not trying to be a trade body.
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Unknown
Our job is not to lobby the commission and try to drive policy direction. It is to support the commission in, undertaking policy change, trying to make that as smooth and effective and kind of sensible for the industry as possible. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's obviously lots of different ways that the commission work with the industry and gather information.
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Unknown
I think one thing about the forum is that we're we're independent. So we are representing ourselves as individuals. Yes, we work within the industry, but we're not representing our licensed businesses when, when we're dealing with with commission staff. And I think that that changes the dynamic a little better than if you were, you know, here to present on behalf of your company.
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Unknown
Yeah.
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Unknown
course. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. That's really helpful. So I just wanted to touch on, sort of when people get involved in the industry for what sort of what sort of things are they involved in?
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Unknown
And I know the next sort of 12 months you've already spoken about either. There's a lot of stuff that the industry is going to be going through with changes around taxation. And, you know, illegal gambling is a big topic and these sorts of things that obviously are out there. What sort of things will you sort of look ahead and go, right, why do we need to be focusing our efforts
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Unknown
that that's up. Yeah. That's stuck. So although I sort of I guess head of the advisory groups I don't do everything. So I've got Kelly King who's a dedicated resource for the Lived Experience Advisory panel, and I've got Tesoro who's the governance stakeholder manager.
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Unknown
So we work together to be across really across the commission, looking at the work plan and deliverables and what's coming down the track, and then speaking with the relevant colleagues and, who are leading on that work to to look at how we can help progress and develop that work and enhance it via our groups. So we do develop a work plan as much as we kind of sort of a forward look.
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Unknown
So yeah, we we're constantly we're constantly working in that way. And we bring the chairs of each group in to help develop that, that plan as well, and bring them into early conversations with relevant Workstream leaders or members of the executive team. Yeah. So and I think yeah, just to add to that, and I think there's there's quite a few kind of big ongoing projects that we've dipped in and out of since then, since we've started, really.
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Unknown
You know, we've done a lot of work with, with John Pierce, in the AML space. You know, I mentioned there my risk assessment, but, you know, before that kind of the BGC, AML code, he kind of used as a sounding board to discuss that. I think another one, which was a really interesting one, which I think is ongoing, is around, trying to reduce the regulatory burden.
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Unknown
I can't remember the chap who came to talk, Richard. Which is how did a couple of targets that hasn't it? Yeah. He was I mean, that was really interesting because from that and from discussions with, you know, people who work at operators, we kind of, you know, unearthed several processes whereby operators are communicating with the commission and maybe sending data or doing something in a certain way that it it's just it's not really even being used or it's not, you know, it's not an optimal way to be doing that.
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Unknown
Said, either side. And so just being able to have those conversations, like you can sometimes put in some really quick fixes and changes, which actually makes life easier for everybody. Which I think it's, you know, it's really, really cool when we stumble across one of those, I think it's I think that's a really good point. And that's, that's kind of why we have these groups, standing groups.
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Unknown
To have that consistent and continual dialog. An example that that stood out for me was in the very first industry forum. Yeah, the very first agenda item was on our consultation process. And it basically you have a position where people at the commission try and do really good work that think about it really deeply. They worked really hard on it and try and do well, but they can't think of everything.
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Unknown
And in that first ever agenda item, we got the perspective around smaller operators completing our consultations, and we had things that we just wouldn't have thought of straight away. We were like, well, we can fix that, or we can, we can do that. And that that will fix it. So it was the very first gender item made me think, this is this is going to work.
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Unknown
So this is why we have these groups. And that was just from a relatively small project. So we have that obviously right the way through our work up to the bigger projects. Yeah.
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Unknown
And how do you sort of determine then what gets put in front of the for the sort of depending on what comes through the system, or do you try and focus on certain areas that you think you can make the best you know, the best amount of value you can add to it?
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Unknown
Yeah. So that
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Unknown
that again comes back to me and my team and one of the things we did, I think it was last year, we just analyzed all of the commission's business plan and went through it and went through every piece of work. The commission's doing, and spoke with every workstream lead and looked at ways where it looked at the work that they were doing and the insight that they might have talked about the insight that they might need and the perspectives they might need to help with that, that work.
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Unknown
Okay,
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Unknown
This is inside the Commission, a Gambling Commission podcast to stay up to date with the latest content. You can subscribe to our Gambling Commission YouTube channel, or you can find us on your preferred platform wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks for listening.