BetOut

Our community, outbid.

Nearly 500 people in England take their lives every year due to gambling-related harm (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2023), and 1 in 5 members of the public is directly or indirectly harmed by it right now. Gambling harms come through debt, relationship breakdown, addiction, mental illness, and even bereavement - with an economic cost of £1.77 billion a year.

The Gambling Act 2005 stripped councils of the power to say no to new betting premises on our streets. Its "aim to permit" rule means authorities must approve new betting shop licences unless they can prove specific harms, emphasis on prove. Now with the burden of proof solely with underfunded councils who just can't afford litigation (that they would most likely lose) with gambling companies, these shops have become harrowingly common. Research has found betting shops are 10x more concentrated in deprived areas, where people are 3x more likely to develop gambling problems.

There are currently more betting shops in England than children's centres, libraries, museums, and art galleries. What would you rather have on your High Street?

Zoom in on the map to find stats for your area.
It's time to Get Bet Out.

Gambling Commission, DfE, DCMS, Arts Council England, OpenStreetMap, MHCLG, ONS

Loading map data…

Based on Gambling Commission GGY data

Legend

Show on map

In the visible map area, for every one of these there are...

Zoom into an area to see local stats.

Deprivation of visible area

-avg. IMD decile (1 = most deprived)

Most deprivedLeast deprived

Betting shops are from the Gambling Commission premises licence register, filtered to active betting shop licences in England and geocoded from postcodes via postcodes.io. Points represent postcode centroids, not exact shopfront locations.

Libraries are from DCMS public library data (2016 baseline). Some closures since this dataset was compiled may not be reflected.

Children's centres are from the DfE Get Information About Schools service, filtered to open centres in England.

Museums, galleries, theatres, arts centres, and community centres are sourced from OpenStreetMap contributors. Coverage is community-maintained and varies by area - rural areas and smaller venues are likely underrepresented, making these counts conservative.

Food banks and shelters (proximity analysis only) are sourced from OpenStreetMap contributors and will be incomplete.

Jobcentres are from the official DWP Jobcentre Plus register, published via the NOMIS Labour Market Statistics service (nomisweb.co.uk) on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, as part of the Government Digital Service Registers programme. Filtered to England only.

Deprivation uses the English Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 (MHCLG) at LSOA level, across 33,755 small areas in England. Population figures are ONS mid-2022 estimates.

Harm statistics - the "nearly 500" suicide estimate is a modelled figure from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (2023) and should be understood as an estimate, not a precise count. The "1 in 5" figure is from GambleAware (2023). The "10x concentration" figure is from the University of Bristol (2025).

References

Gambling Commission. (2025). Industry statistics: Annual report, April 2024 to March 2025.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. (2019). English Indices of Deprivation 2019.

Office for National Statistics. (2023). Mid-year population estimates, 2022.

Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. (2023). Gambling-related harms evidence review: Quantifying gambling-related suicide.

Newall, P. W. S., Wilkinson, M., Kidger, J., & Rogers, J. (2025). The relationship between Problem Gambling Severity Index scores and suicidality. Addiction, 120(9).

GambleAware. (2023). Written evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

House of Lords Select Committee. (2020). Gambling Harm - Time for Action (HL Paper 79).

Department for Work and Pensions. (2025). Jobcentre Plus office register. Published via NOMIS Labour Market Statistics (nomisweb.co.uk) under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

House of Commons Library. (2026). Betting shops: Licensing and planning issues (SN06919).

OpenStreetMap contributors. (2026). OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org