{"id":340656,"date":"2025-12-29T08:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T08:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340656\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T08:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T08:27:07","slug":"gambling-centres-clustered-in-deprived-areas-of-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340656\/","title":{"rendered":"Gambling centres &#8216;clustered&#8217; in deprived areas of the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Local Government Association said councils needed &#8220;flexible powers&#8221; and the ability to refuse applications for gambling premises near schools, health services and other &#8220;sensitive locations&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Allastar Gair, communications director at BACTA, said local authorities already had the power to refuse applications where they believed licensing objectives would be undermined.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the sector was &#8220;tightly regulated&#8221; and continuing to raise standards through &#8220;strengthened systems, better training and visible safer gambling measures&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Gair added: &#8220;A new AGC does not open without a full licensing process, council oversight and a detailed risk assessment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Operators do not target deprived areas; they take on long term empty units and invest in high streets that need regeneration.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A spokesman from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the government was committed to giving councils the power to limit gambling shops.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added: &#8220;We&#8217;ll do everything we can to halt the decline people are seeing in their towns and high streets.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Local Government Association said councils needed &#8220;flexible powers&#8221; and the ability to refuse applications for gambling premises&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-340656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}