Photo by Jon Franklin/Millennium Images, UK
Scott sat on a brown sofa overlooking the green lawns reading Dopamine Nation, a book about the cost of overindulgence. “Is that a good book?” someone asked as they slowly stirred milk into their tea. Scott nodded, “It passes the time.” The person slunk back upstairs of their 16-bedroom residence.
Parkland Place is an alcohol, drug and gambling recovery centre in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. It was built in the 1880s as a retreat for the successful cotton spinner Joseph Smith. Now operated by the members-led charity Adferiad, it hosts people affected by mental ill health, addiction, housing challenges and other complex life needs. Scott and his fellow resident were both at Parkland Place receiving treatment for gambling addiction. Both are Welsh, but many of the centre’s clients travel from across Britain to use its services.
An estimated 1.4 million adults in the country have a gambling problem, according to a study published by the Gambling Commission last year. Representatives from the gambling industry say they are committed to funding research and treatment to reduce gambling harms, though critics say it is not enough.
The government is taking measures – such as imposing stake limits for online slots and banning auto-play features – to try to mitigate the harm gambling might have on Brits. But the services helping people recover from gambling addiction are under strain. Certain policy transitions, such as the new gambling transition funding levy, have disrupted funding systems, posing a significant risk to the vulnerable. I spent three nights at Parkland Place to understand who stays at these centres, how funding reforms have affected those in recovery, and what staff are doing to keep the services available.
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The routine was strict. Breakfast was served at 7am, lunch at midday and dinner was at 6pm (5pm on Sundays). No takeaways were allowed. Cheryl Williams, the manager at Parkland Place and the strategic lead of gambling and other harms at Adferiad, gave the housemates their phones for one hour a day between 6.30pm and 7.30pm. Patients hovered around before this hour. They told me boredom is one of the hardest parts of recovery.
Scott grew up frequenting snooker clubs after his parents’ divorce. He said he traces the beginnings of his gambling problems to when he was nine or ten. A manager at his local bookies offered him a weekend job after he turned 18. After a tip-off about a horse, he placed a £50 bet through his own till. He ran up £60,000 in debt chasing the loss. “My best mate was my deputy manager,” he said. “I wrote a resignation note on a betting slip, and left it on the desk.” Five years later, at a different bookies, Scott racked up £70,000 in unauthorised bets, hiding losses through evening poker sessions and forged customer signatures. “If there were 45 races in a day, I would bet on every single one of them – before I even got to work.”
Parkland Place, he said, gave him a chance to pause. “I wasn’t aware that I could come to a residential rehab – and I’ve worked in bookies for more than ten years.” He now finds enjoyment beyond gambling. “We went on a trip to Snowdonia, and I swam in a cold lake, and that was quite nice. I’m quite hopeful that when I leave here things will be better.”
Gambling is a significant problem in 21st-century Britain. GambleAware was created as the Gambling Industry Charitable Trust in 2002, following a government review that called for a dedicated body to fund research and treatment for gambling harms. The charity was funded through voluntary donations from licensed gambling operators. Its aim was to direct voluntary levy contributions towards harm prevention, treatment and research.
The 2005 Gambling Act, introduced by Tony Blair’s government, aimed to increase tax revenues by relaxing gambling laws. The “aim-to-permit” principle required councils to approve new premises unless there were specific grounds for refusal.
A government review of gambling laws began in 2020, commissioned by the then culture secretary Oliver Dowden. In 2022, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm, Iain Duncan Smith, said that the government must stop gambling companies “get[ting] away with literal murder”. Eventually, the government published a white paper in 2023, which recommended measures such as limiting online casino stakes and regulating black-market gambling operators. The review had cross-party support.
A statutory gambling levy – a mandatory charge on UK-licensed gambling operators to contribute part of their profits to reducing gambling harm – became operational in April 2025. It was run by the Gambling Commission, an executive non-departmental body of the government that distributes the money from gambling companies through research, prevention and treatment streams managed by lead bodies, such as NHS England and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID). GambleAware’s stewardship of the voluntary levy ceased, and it closed in March this year.
The government set up a gambling levy transition fund that offered three months’ worth of grants to charities that had been receiving money from GambleAware. But charities and harm reduction groups have called the government’s fund a “consolation prize”. Parkland Place applied this year to both NHS England and the OHID, but was rejected by both. Jane Dodds, leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, asked the Senedd in June why third-sector organisations have been left to “pick up the pieces”. She also argued Public Health Wales had “continued [to] delay establishing prevention commissioning arrangements”.
In a quiet painting room overlooking Parkland Place’s tranquil lawns, the manager Cheryl told me that its services and staff have been hit by the changes. “We have had to say no to people… Nobody stands in school and goes: ‘Miss, when I grow old, I want to be addicted to drugs or alcohol.’ These are people that deserve a second chance.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said the government is “acutely aware of the impact” harmful gambling can have and is committed to strengthening protections to safeguard those at risk. “The gambling levy transition fund was set up to ensure the continuity of gambling harm prevention and treatment services in England only during the transition from the voluntary, industry-funded system to the new statutory gambling levy system. The fund’s sole, time-limited purpose was to ensure service continuity for users already benefiting from the voluntary system during the transition to the statutory system,” they said.
For now, the staff at Parkland Place continue their duties. Gambling websites are prohibited, and those in treatment are asked to self-exclude using apps such as BetBlocker. When I visited, there were TVs in every room, and, surprisingly, access to sports channels was possible. On my first night, when I turned on my TV, a bingo advert appeared within seconds. I managed to access gambling websites through pop-up adverts on football-streaming services. “We can’t police it all,” a staff member told me.
One night, we watched a football match in the counselling room. As the game wore on, some drifted off to bed, bored; others stayed on the sofas, calling out commentary to each other. At half-time, I counted four separate betting adverts cut across the screen, one within the first thirty seconds of the ad break. Odds, logos, sign-up offers. I thought back to what a staff member had told me earlier that week: we can’t police it all.
Some names have been changed.
[Further reading: Should Andy Burnham make voting compulsory?]
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