Responsible Gambling and Where to Get Help

Free help, at any hour

• National Gambling Helpline — 0808 8020 133, free, 24 hours a day, run by GamCare (opens in a new tab). Confidential advice for you or for someone else’s gambling.
• GambleAware (opens in a new tab) — independent information on gambling harm and routes to free treatment.
• GAMSTOP (opens in a new tab) — free self-exclusion. One registration blocks you from every gambling site licensed in Great Britain for six months, one year or five years.

Tools your bookmaker must offer

Every Gambling Commission licensee has to provide deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion on request. They are in the account settings rather than the front page. A deposit limit takes effect immediately when you lower it, and a cooling-off period applies before you can raise it again.

Signs worth taking seriously

• Betting more than you planned, or chasing a loss with a larger stake
• Gambling with money meant for something else, or borrowing to gamble
• Hiding how much or how often you bet
• Feeling that a win would fix a financial problem

None of these needs to reach a crisis before it is worth a phone call. The helpline above takes calls from people who are simply uneasy about it.

What self-exclusion actually covers

GAMSTOP is a single registration that blocks you from every online gambling site licensed in Great Britain, not one operator at a time. It cannot be lifted early: once the minimum period you chose has run, the block stays until you actively ask for it to be removed, and a further cooling-off period applies after that. It does not cover sites licensed outside Great Britain, betting shops, or the National Lottery, which is worth knowing before relying on it as a complete barrier.

Self-exclusion with an individual operator works separately and closes only that account. Betting shops operate their own scheme through the Multi-Operator Self-Exclusion Scheme, which has to be requested locally.

If it is someone else’s gambling

The National Gambling Helpline takes calls from family members and friends, not only from people who gamble, and you do not need the person’s permission or knowledge to call. Advisers can talk through what to say, what not to take responsibility for, and what practical steps exist — including protecting joint finances, which is often the more urgent question.

GamCare also runs support groups and a live chat service for affected others. Both are free.

What this site is

A price study. It measures the charge inside bookmakers’ odds across UK competitions and publishes the figures with their method, so that the cost of a bet can be compared the way the cost of anything else is. You must be 18 or over to gamble in the UK.