Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Betting shops - inside information
I was chatting to a bloke I play cricket with last night who works in a betting shop on Green Lanes. Not our part of Green Lanes though. Anyway, two interesting bits of information. One is that most of the customers for the FOB machines come to him at the till with their debit card and he loads it on the machines for them, £500 to £1000 pounds at a time, many times. The other interesting thing was that they're only allowed 4 machines per premise. To get around this they are installing a partition wall to split the "shop" in half so that they can have 8 machines. With our nine betting shops we could have 72 machines, we really will be a casino that people will come from miles around to gamble at.
Tags for Forum Posts: betting, betting shops, gambling
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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John: surely this would not be enough "to get around" any limit on the number of machines per premise?
I imagine that premises are defined by deposited plans and partition walls wouldn't make any difference.
Would this not would constitute a breach of their licence?
If nothing else, it hints at the greed of the owners and the profitability of the FOBTs.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Clive, John's right. This is a tried & tested ruse. It doesn't always get through planing though. I might be imagining it, but I half remember there being an application to subdivide for one of the Harringay betting shops.
The FOBTs are what betting shops are all about nowadays. Without them there'd be no profit.
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Permalink Reply by Stuart on
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Agora tried the partitioning/split premises ruse last year but were swiftly rumbled at the planning application stage.
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Well if this ruse has ever worked, it shows just how feeble is the Gambling Act and how much it favours the gambling 'industry'. The current legislation allows unlimited number of betting shops and its seems, cannot even properly limit in its own terms, the number of FOBTs, the crack cocaine of gambling.
Of all licensed activity on the high street, gambling is surely one of the least controlled. Unlike fags and booze, nowhere is there a government warning that this 'service' is likely to damage you.
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Permalink Reply by Takaokagiejin on
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£1,000 !? blimey
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Hugh, is there not an inconsistency in the legislation here? Thanks to New Labour's Gambling Act (2005) market demand is now the sole test for numbers of betting shops (i.e. no longer influence by courts or councils to say there're enough, thanks).
If market demand is good enough to be the sole determinant of betting shop numbers, why then should market demand not be good enough to be the sole determinant of the number of Fixed Odd Betting Terminals?
Why not allow the unlimited numbers of betting shop owners to stuff their premises with as many different ways of fleecing the mug-punters as possible? This would be in the spirit of the Act, which was to promote competition.
NB for the avoidance of doubt, I am not advocating no restrictions on FOBTs (much the reverse) but point out an inconsistency of the legislation.
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It's an altogether pitiful piece of legislation. Makes no sense. Now it remains to be seen whether Dave'n'Nick's Big Society is big enough to see it off.
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Permalink Reply by Tim Caines on
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Let's hope this happens! Let alone the social damage these betting shops can cause, they also leave a dire mess on the pavements outside too!
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Googling around for "fixed odds betting terminals" turned up this old Guardian article from 2004.
Gems like this:
Such has been the concern of the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, about the potential for problem gambling associated with touch-screen roulette that it is thought to have influenced her decision in June to substantially reverse the deregulatory spirit of the draft bill. ... limiting each betting shop to a maximum of four terminals
and this
Ironically, the proliferation of virtual roulette was sparked by a change in betting duty introduced by Gordon Brown in October 2001. The decision to tax bookmakers' gross profit and abolish the unpopular duty on bets staked was welcomed by punters, but few within the Treasury understood they were opening the door to a new generation of unregulated gambling machines attracting bets of more than £15bn a year.
It really sounds like our politicians were mugged by the market.
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