Gambling Commission acting chief sets out National Lottery protection progress
The Gambling Commission has said participant protection remains central to the National Lottery's Fourth Licence, as its acting chief executive addressed an industry conference on 1 October 2026.
Automated report. This article was drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed below, without a human writing step. Gambling News labels every article produced this way. A person is answerable for it: if something here is wrong, write to editor@gamblingnews.co.uk and we will correct it on the page and say what changed.
The Gambling Commission said its acting chief executive, Sarah Gardner, addressed the Allwyn Participant Protection Conference on 1 October 2026, setting out progress made on protecting National Lottery players and the challenges still to be addressed.
According to the Commission, Gardner told the conference that Allwyn had delivered the largest technology upgrade of the National Lottery in its history earlier in the year, describing it as a crucial step in Allwyn’s stewardship of the Fourth Licence. The Commission said this upgrade had allowed it to approve a number of new games and game changes, including the introduction of Powerball.
The Commission said that over the past 12 months of published data, the National Lottery had raised £1.7 billion for good causes across the United Kingdom. It also referenced its Gambling Survey for Great Britain, stating that the National Lottery was the most common gambling activity among participants, with 31 per cent saying they had played it in the previous four weeks, 11 per cent playing scratchcards and 6 per cent playing online instant win games.
The Commission said Gardner told the conference that the National Lottery was consistently shown to be one of the lowest risk gambling products, but that this did not mean risks or the need for protections were absent. She said Allwyn had embedded new protections for all online and app players as part of its digital transformation, and was working with retailers to strengthen support for players at risk of harm in store.
The Commission said Gardner described the National Lottery as a national institution that must meet higher standards and face greater scrutiny, adding that trust, once lost, is never easy to win back. She was quoted as saying that the Commission expects Allwyn and the National Lottery “to be at the forefront in terms of determining and demonstrating best practice when it comes to protecting players”.
The Commission said Gardner closed by stating that participant protection must remain at the core of the National Lottery’s continued success.