Study Suggests £150 Affordability Check Threshold Should be Raised

A study has suggested the trigger point for the proposed affordability checks should be raised from £150 to £187, with the authors arguing this would provide a better balance between harm prevention and liberty preservation.

Affordability checks were proposed as part of the government’s 2023 White Paper, which suggested a number of gambling regulatory reforms.

Light-touch vulnerability checks were initially triggered when a player spent £500 in a month as part of a trial that began in August 2024, and from February 28, 2025, this decreased to £150 spend in a month. The final stage of the rollout of affordability checks is yet to be announced.

In a journal published by Robert Heirene and Philip Newall, titled ‘Addiction’, a study was published using open banking data from 424 consumers who gamble, simulating the impact of the rolling 30-day £150 net deposit threshold. Participants were UK residents who had gambled in the previous year.

Results of the study

Over the course of 12 months, two thirds of participants who classed as at-risk and almost half of participants who classed as no/lower-risk crossed the £150 threshold.

This suggests that while the checks are potentially going to help a high number of people who could experience issues, they are also going to be placed on a high number of people who may not necessarily need them.

When the threshold was increased to £186.90, the authors said the balance was slightly improved, although £150 remained within the range of appropriate values. Optimising for harm prevention in the sample required lowering the threshold to £39, and emphasising liberty preservation required raising the threshold to £716.50.

An at-risk gambler is classed as someone who scores 1 or higher on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). The researchers found using a more conservative definition of at-risk, which would mean raising the at-risk classification to a PGSI score of 2 or higher, this resulted in higher thresholds and that lower thresholds may be more appropriate for players under the age of 30.

Trade-offs highlighted

Heirene posted on LinkedIn:

“Overall, the £150 value is probably defensible, but it does seem to land more on the side of harm reduction (i.e., identifying as many potentially at-risk consumers as possible) than what we’ve called “liberty preservation” (i.e., not bothering people gambling without issue).

“This might be a good thing – a harm minimisation strategy probably should prioritise harm reduction! But one of the key purposes of our article is to highlight the trade-off here. These checks are unlikely to be cost-free from any perspective.

“If a large percentage of those gambling within their means are affected by these checks, how will this affect the feasibility and public perception of this policy? And how might this influence engagement with the regulated market?”

MPs unhappy

In May, a collective of 19 MPs who represent British racecourses wrote to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, calling for a postponement to the implementation of affordability checks, arguing there has been a lack of transparency regarding the results of the pilots of the checks carried out by regulator the Gambling Commission.

Separately, financial risk assessments (FRAs) have been proposed as a means of identifying high-spending remote gambling players who may be in financial difficulties.

The assessments would not assess a player’s income or how much an individual could afford to gamble. The Commission’s board met in May to discuss implementing FRAs, but decided more time is needed to complete its assessment on the matter.