GAMSTOP

The Gambling Commission confirms that "GAMSTOP is an online multi-operator self-exclusion scheme and has been available since April 2018," and that participation is not optional for licensees: "all gambling businesses must participate in this scheme. They must also update their lists of self-excluded consumers every 24 hours." The Commission has taken enforcement action, including licence suspensions, against operators who failed to use the system. A consumer registers directly with GAMSTOP (rather than with each operator individually), and that single registration blocks their access to accounts across every GB-licensed online gambling operator, addressing the earlier gap where a person could self-exclude from one site but continue gambling on others.

Because the scheme works by matching the personal details a consumer supplies, its effectiveness depends on those details being accurate and consistent with the details held by gambling operators; minor discrepancies can allow a self-excluded person to slip through. Registrants are also required not to try to circumvent the block: "when signing up to GAMSTOP you agree not to attempt to register new gambling accounts, log in to any of your existing accounts, or in any other way try to get around GAMSTOP's mechanisms during your self-exclusion." GAMSTOP is operated by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited and sits alongside other tools such as bank-level gambling blocks and device/software-based blocking as part of the wider safer-gambling toolkit.