The consistent misrepresentation of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain is a problem of the Gambling Commission’s own making, according to Regulus Partners, who called for the regulator to clean up its mess and bring back the NHS Health Survey as the primary source of gambling-related harm data.

The UK Gambling Commission has failed to enforce its own guidance on the use and misuse of official statistics, says Regulus Partner, with the industry analysts calling for a return to the NHS Health Survey.

Since June 2024, the regulator has issued 21 notifications regarding the inappropriate use of statistics, primarily related to its Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB). However, in over two-thirds of cases, no corrective action has been taken, with only three organisations making full and unmitigated corrections.

“The situation is entirely of the Gambling Commission’s own making,” wrote a spokesperson for Regulus Partners. “It elected to proceed with the publication of the GSGB despite strong evidence of its unreliability and in contravention of the terms of its public consultation in 2020.”

Despite pledging to take a tough stance on the misrepresentation of its new data, the regulator has taken no visible action against persistent offenders. According to Regulus Partners, this inaction may put the Commission in violation of the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics, which mandates that data producers challenge the inappropriate use of statistics and take measures to prevent further misuse.

And one needs to look no further than the adoption of 2.5 percent as the rate of problem gambling – an unofficial figure from the GSGB  that has been allowed to run free by the Commission which has failed, and some say hasn’t even bothered, to try to rein that figure back in. 

A fortnight ago at the ICE expo in Barcelona, Rhodes acknowledged that the GSGB’s reception had been “challenging, despite the many years of preparation, consultation, engagement and external evaluation”.  True, but then that is down to the fact that a large number of observers argue  that the preparation was poor and the basis ill-conceived; consultation was either dismissed or ignored by the regulator; the engagement was a diktat; and the external evaluation is considered far more accurate than that of a defensive regulator more concerned at protecting its reputation than repairing its flawed survey..

Which is somewhere close to what Regulus Partners contends: this difficulty stems from the Commission’s refusal to address the survey’s flaws, suggesting a return to the NHS Health Survey.

“While significant doubts attend the accuracy of the GSGB in terms of prevalence, our National Health Service should continue to be trusted to produce health statistics,” concluded Regulus Partners. “In the meantime, the regulator should wake up to the fact that its guidance on the use of official statistics has been both confusing and ineffective. Having pledged to take a robust approach to misuse of statistics, it is time for the Commission to step up. Its credibility depends upon it.”