The gambling commission has recently published the annual report for 2008 to 2009. The aim of the gambling commission is to ensure that gambling remains fair for everybody concerned with the activity, and its activities revolve around the Gambling Act which became law in 2005.

The commission has spent a considerable amount of time developing a working interpretation of this act and expressing it in such a way that it is more transparent to the gambling industry in order to ensure that the industry fully understands the rules and regulations involving gambling licences. The commission has also recognised that the gambling industry is undergoing some difficulties and challenging times as a result of the current recession.

The commission has admitted to having paid nearly three thousand visits to gambling licence holders in the UK. Many of these were of the mystery shopping visit types to both online casinos and betting shops. In addition they have collected huge amounts of other data from their licence holders. All this data has been collated with the objective of providing an overview of how the industry functions in relation to the objectives of the act.

In an additional exercise, the gambling commission participated in a series of meetings with interested parties in order to finally come to some decisions on three areas that have for some time remained unclear to both commission and its licence holders. These are what is known as Primary purpose, which means the gambling activity associated with a particular location and subject to a particular licence is in fact the main type of activity that is carried out there; issues concerning house competitions and finally on deciding whether or not bingo machines are entertainment or gaming machines.

Another very grey area to which the commission paid attention was betting in pubs. In fact this is illegal, and the commission along with the police have almost eradicated it in most regions of the country. However, betting in pubs is so much a part of the culture in some regions that it will never disappear altogether.