Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in which areas of the UK casinos are permitted under the Gambling Act 1968; how many casinos are permitted in each such area; and what the maximum size is of each such casino that is permitted.

Under the Gaming Act 1968, 186 casino licences were created in 53 permitted areas, generally the areas of former county boroughs with populations of over 125,000 at that time. These licences were preserved by transitional arrangements in the Gambling Act 2005 and the majority of casinos in Great Britain still operate by virtue of one of these converted licences. The local authority in which each casino is located is now the licensing authority under section 2 of the 2005 Act. 144 of the licences are currently in use.

There is no maximum size, but 1968 Act casinos which have a gambling area of 200m2 or more must offer a minimum non-gambling area equivalent to at least 10% of their total gambling area. The permitted areas, and the number of licences allocated to each, are as follows:

England

Birkenhead (1)

Birmingham (8)

Blackpool (4)

Bolton (2)

Bournemouth (3)

Bradford (3)

Brighton (3)

Bristol (5)

Coventry (4)

Derby (2)

Dudley (1)

Great Yarmouth (3)

Hove (1)

Huddersfield (2)

Kingston upon Hull (3)

Leeds (5)

Leicester (3)

Liverpool (7)

London (The area which is within the area specified in the licensing (Metropolitan Special Hours Area) Order 1961 - plus Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) (28)

Luton (3)

Lytham St Annes (1)

Manchester (9)

Margate (3)

Newcastle upon Tyne (3)

Northampton (4)

Nottingham (6)

Plymouth (2)

Portsmouth (3)

Ramsgate (1)

Reading (3)

Ryde (0)

Salford (2)

Sandown/Shanklin (0)

Scarborough (2)

Sheffield (5)

Southampton (3)

Southend-on-Sea (4)

Southport (1)

Stockport (2)

Stoke-on-Trent (2)

Sunderland (1)

Teeside/Middlesborough (3)

Torbay (1)

Walsall (3)

Warley (1)

West Bromwich (1)

Wolverhampton (3)

Scotland

Aberdeen (3)

Dundee (2)

Edinburgh (5)

Glasgow (9)

Wales

Cardiff (3)

Swansea (4)