Glasgow City Council has secured more than £3.44 million over three years from the UK gambling industry’s statutory levy, funding an expanded phase of The Glasgow Project to address gambling-related harm across the city, according to iGaming Business.
The award covers 2026 to 2029 and will fund prevention programmes in schools and youth services, support for young people facing gambling-related debt, workforce training across health and community services, and targeted place-based investment in three neighbourhoods with the highest density of betting outlets. A Glasgow City Council report puts the annual cost of gambling harm in the city at more than £15 million, the highest figure across Scotland, and states that roughly 42% of the city’s betting shops sit in its most deprived areas.
Priorities for 2026-27 include recruiting additional prevention team staff, re-establishing multi-agency partnerships, and setting up a specialist financial inclusion service for people in gambling-related debt. Public Health Scotland published a mapping of Glasgow’s support networks in January 2025 after the council recognised gambling harm as a public health issue.
Levy structure and wider UK rollout
The statutory levy took effect in April 2025, replacing the industry’s prior voluntary funding arrangement. The Gambling Commission now manages collections on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with the levy designed to raise approximately £100 million annually for research, prevention and treatment work.
The DCMS has separately allocated £25.4 million from the levy to 33 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations across England, while Public Health Wales launched a two-year, £1.4 million grants programme in July aimed at de-normalising gambling harms, administered by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action.
For operators, the shift from voluntary contributions to a mandatory levy raises the operational stakes around local compliance and community engagement in high-impact jurisdictions. Glasgow’s funding includes neighbourhood-level investment in three areas alongside prevention work across the city.
Petra Vanhoof has spent the better part of a decade following the shifting tides of gambling regulation across Europe and beyond. She came up through the compliance side of the industry before pivoting to writing, which gives her a grounded, no-nonsense perspective on the rules, loopholes, and political maneuvering that shape how operators actually do business. She is particularly drawn to the gap between what regulators say and what the market ends up doing in response.