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New Council Gambling Veto Covers Bingo Clubs, Not Casinos

Elisha Franklin

Updated Sep 2026 6 min read Ad policy

Local councils are being handed a tool they have never had: a way to establish, ahead of any application, that new gambling premises in a given area will face a presumption of refusal. It arrives through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, and the government confirmed on 11 August that it intends to bring the power into force. The Act sets out exactly which venues it reaches. Bingo premises are on that list. Casinos are not.

What the Act actually does

Most of the discussion since the announcement has described the change as scrapping the “aim to permit” rule, the duty in section 153 of the Gambling Act 2005 that has pushed licensing authorities towards granting applications for two decades. That is close, but the machinery is different and the difference matters.

Section 87 of the new Act amends section 153 rather than deleting it, and inserts two new provisions alongside it. The first, section 153A, creates the Gambling Impact Assessment. A licensing authority can publish one of these covering a defined area, stating that granting particular kinds of gambling premises application there would not be likely to sit reasonably consistently with the licensing objectives. The second, section 165A, gives the authority the power to reject an application on the strength of that assessment. Section 349, which governs the three-year policy statements councils must publish, is amended to accommodate them.

Two steps are needed before any of this bites. The council publishes an assessment, and its three-year licensing policy has to carry a presumption that applications falling inside that assessment will be rejected. With both in place, section 165A is blunt about what follows. Refusal becomes lawful “solely on the ground that the prospective licence is within the scope of the gambling impact assessment”, and the section adds that this holds “regardless of anything, including any legislation, which would otherwise support or require the grant”. That last clause is what overrides the old tilt towards permitting.

The burden then sits with the applicant, who can still win by showing the licence would be reasonably consistent with the licensing objectives. A limit applies on the council’s side too. Section 153A(8) bars an authority from having regard to “the expected demand for facilities” when deciding whether to publish an assessment or what should go in it. A town cannot simply rule that it has enough bingo halls already.

The four licence types named

Here is where the story turns for anyone who plays bingo. Section 87 does not apply across gambling licensing generally. It lists the categories it reaches, and the wording is precise: a bingo premises licence, an adult gaming centre premises licence, a family entertainment centre premises licence, or a betting premises licence.

Bingo clubs are named in the primary legislation. Not implied, not swept up by general drafting. Named.

The absence is just as striking. Casino premises licences are their own category under section 150 of the Gambling Act, and they do not appear in section 87’s list. A council that publishes an impact assessment can use it against a proposed bingo club, an arcade or a bookmaker. Against a casino application, that particular power is not available. Whatever the reasoning, the reform lands on the high-street end of the sector and leaves the casino end alone.

That contrast has gone unremarked in the coverage so far, which has read the reform through betting shops and adult gaming centres. Understandable, given they were what the announcement talked about. It does mean the sector that is explicitly named has barely featured in its own story.

What still has to happen

None of this is live yet, and the timeline is worth being precise about. The Act received Royal Assent in April, having gone through its Lords stages in March. But section 87 takes effect on a day appointed by the Secretary of State, which has not yet been set. Reporting around the 11 August announcement points to a six-week consultation and an ambition to have the powers working from the start of 2027. Treat both as intentions rather than fixtures.

There is a second brake worth understanding. Even once commenced, nothing changes anywhere until a council chooses to act. An authority has to publish an impact assessment and justify it against the licensing objectives. It also has to carry the matching presumption in the policy statement it consults on every three years. Councils that never publish one carry on under the existing regime. So the reform is best read as a power that becomes available, not a switch that flips across the country.

What it means for bingo clubs

The retail bingo estate is not growing. Rank’s venue list is down to 41 Mecca clubs across Britain, around half of what the brand once operated, and Buzz has taken its own run of closures. Against that backdrop a rule about approving new premises can look beside the point.

Two things keep it relevant. Operators relocate, and a club that leaves a tired site for a retail park needs a fresh premises licence at the new address, which puts it squarely inside any assessment covering that area. The competitive socialising venues that have been the one growing corner of retail gambling need licences too, and several of them run bingo formats.

There is a counterweight. Licensed bingo venues have never drawn the objections that betting shops and adult gaming centres attract. Committee rows are about machine clustering on struggling high streets, not about bingo clubs, and a council writing an assessment has little reason to aim it at one. The realistic risk is narrower than the headline: a bingo club looking to open or relocate inside an area already covered by an assessment could find the presumption running against it, on the strength of concerns that were never about bingo.

No response has come from the bingo sector. The Betting and Gaming Council addressed the announcement in terms of betting shops, noting they support 37,500 jobs and that their number has fallen by more than a third since 2019. The Bingo Association has said nothing publicly at the time of writing, and neither has any major operator.

Nothing here touches online play

Premises licensing governs buildings. The remote licences behind the sites we review sit in a different part of the Gambling Act entirely, and no online bingo room opens, closes or changes its terms because a council published an impact assessment. If you play from home, this is a story about your town rather than your account. Our guide to UK gambling law sets out how the premises and remote regimes divide.

It is not a prohibition either. Applications inside an assessed area can still succeed; the applicant simply has to make the case rather than rely on a statutory tilt in their favour.

What players can do

If a local club matters to you, two moments are worth watching, and neither is the one making news now. The consultation the government has trailed is the first. The second, and the more useful one, is your own council’s gambling policy statement, which is consulted on locally every three years and is where any impact assessment has to live. Those consultations are answered by operators and campaign groups, rarely by the people who use the venues.

For everyone else the change is smaller than it sounds and more specific than it has been reported. Bingo is named in the Act. Casinos are not. And whether it makes any difference where you live depends on a decision your council has not taken yet.