Responsible Gambling — Tools, Support, and Help for UK Players

If gambling is causing you harm, or you’re worried about someone close to you, help is available right now. Free and confidential.

You don’t need a diagnosed problem to call any of these. They help with early warning signs, financial concerns, and family support. Every call is confidential.

The questions below come from the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), a standardised screening tool used by gambling researchers and charities. Over the past 12 months:

• 1. Have you bet more than you could really afford to lose? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 2. Have you needed to gamble with larger amounts of money to get the same feeling of excitement? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 3. When you gambled, did you go back another day to try to win back the money you lost? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 4. Have you borrowed money or sold anything to get money to gamble? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 5. Have you felt that you might have a problem with gambling? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 6. Has gambling caused you any health problems, including stress or anxiety? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 7. Have people criticised your betting or told you that you had a gambling problem, regardless of whether or not you thought it was true? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 8. Has your gambling caused any financial problems for you or your household? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)
• 9. Have you felt guilty about the way you gamble or what happens when you gamble? Never (0) · Sometimes (1) · Most of the time (2) · Almost always (3)

How to score: Add your nine answers together for a total between 0 and 27.

If you’d rather use a guided version that scores itself, BeGambleAware’s self-assessment takes about three minutes and is completely anonymous.

Every UKGC-licensed casino is required to provide these tools. If an operator hides them or makes them hard to find, that’s a warning sign in itself.

• Deposit Limits

  Set a daily, weekly, or monthly cap on how much you can deposit. Since October 2025, every UKGC-licensed operator has been required to prompt you to set a deposit limit before your first deposit. You can lower the limit at any time and it takes effect immediately. Raising it triggers a 24-hour cooling-off period before the new higher limit kicks in.

• Session Time Limits and Reality Checks

  A session time limit logs you out after a set period. A reality check pops up at intervals you choose (every 30 or 60 minutes, usually) and tells you how long you’ve been playing and how much you’ve spent. Both are in the account settings at every UK casino.

• Loss Limits

  A cap on how much you can lose in a given period. Unlike a deposit limit, this accounts for wins you reinvest. If you hit the loss limit, you can’t keep playing until the period resets.

• Cooling-Off Periods and Time-Outs

  A short break from your account, typically lasting from 24 hours to six weeks. During the cooling-off, you can’t log in, deposit, or play. Useful if you’re spending more than you want to but aren’t ready to self-exclude.

• Self-Exclusion at the Operator Level

  A longer block on your account, usually six months to five years, at a specific casino. Once activated, the operator must close the account, refund any remaining balance, and stop all marketing to you. Self-exclusion cannot be reversed early. That’s the point.

• GamStop — Nationwide Self-Exclusion

  GamStop is the UK’s national self-exclusion register. Sign up once and you’re blocked from every UKGC-licensed online gambling site and app for a period you choose: six months, one year, or five years. Registration is free and takes about a minute. Since April 2024, GamStop also covers gambling by telephone and email, not just online play.

• Affordability Checks

  Since February 2025, UKGC-licensed operators carry out financial vulnerability checks when your net deposits hit £150 over a rolling 30-day period. These are background checks that don’t affect your credit score, and they’re there to catch warning signs early. If an operator asks for payslips or bank statements, that’s an enhanced check, usually triggered by higher spend. The checks are about protection, not accusation.

If you want to talk to someone, for yourself or for someone you care about, these are the organisations we point people to:

Gambling harm doesn’t stop with the person gambling. If you’re worried about a partner, parent, child, or friend, you’re not alone. There’s specific support for you too.

Signs that someone close to you may be struggling:

• Money going missing, or unexplained borrowing
• Secrecy around phone use, especially in the evening or at night
• Mood changes tied to wins and losses
• Missing work, appointments, or family events
• Lying about where they’ve been or what they’ve spent
• Withdrawal from family life, hobbies, or friends

If you want to start a conversation: pick a calm moment, avoid accusations, and focus on what you’ve noticed rather than what you think they’re doing wrong. You can prepare by reading GamCare’s guide for friends and family.

Support specifically for affected others:

• Gam-Anon — peer support for people affected by someone else’s gambling
• GamCare family support — confidential chat, advice, and group sessions
• National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 — also takes calls from family members

The UK Gambling Commission regulates every online casino that accepts UK players. Operators must meet rules on safety, transparency, and player protection as licence conditions, not optional extras. The ones below are what matter most to you as a player:

• Online slot stake limits (since April 2025): £5 per spin maximum for players aged 25 and over, £2 per spin for players aged 18–24. Operators verify age before applying the correct limit.
• Wagering requirements cap (since January 2026): Welcome bonuses can carry a maximum wagering requirement of 10x the bonus value. Mixed-product bonuses (casino + sports in one offer) are banned.
• Credit card ban (since April 2020): Gambling with credit cards is illegal at UKGC-licensed operators. Debit cards, e-wallets, bank transfer, and prepaid methods are allowed.
• Financial vulnerability checks (since February 2025): Light-touch checks at £150 net deposits over 30 days. Enhanced checks at higher spend — operators may ask for proof of income for larger stakes.
• Deposit limit prompts (since October 2025): Every operator must prompt you to set a deposit limit before your first deposit.
• Game speed limits (since October 2021): Online slots must have a minimum spin speed of 2.5 seconds. Auto-play is banned.
• Mandatory GamStop integration: Every UKGC-licensed online operator must be registered with GamStop. If you self-exclude through GamStop, they have to block you.

If you ever think an operator isn’t following these rules, you can report them to the UKGC directly through the gamblingcommission.gov.uk website.

If you visit UK casinos in person and want a real break from playing, the SENSE scheme is the land-based equivalent of GamStop. SENSE stands for Self-Enrolment National Self-Exclusion, and one application excludes you from every licensed land-based casino in Great Britain.

Key things to know about SENSE:

• Launched in August 2015. SENSE has been running for over a decade, originally under the National Casino Forum, then briefly under the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), and now as an independent company called Self-Enrolment National Self-Exclusion Ltd. The scheme itself has carried on without interruption through those handovers.
• How to sign up. You can register in person at any UK casino reception, or by email. Staff are trained to walk you through the process privately. The full information lives at senseselfexclusion.com.
• Exclusion length. The minimum is six months, and a single enrolment can be extended up to one year. This is shorter than GamStop, which runs in bands of six months, one year, or five years.
• What it does. Once enrolled, your details are shared (with your consent) with every licensed land-based casino in Great Britain. You’re also removed from their marketing lists.

For online self-exclusion, use GamStop. The two schemes cover different things, and signing up for both is the right move if you want to step away from both land-based and online play.

A note on the National Casino Forum. If you’ve come across older references to the National Casino Forum (NCF) running SENSE, that was true until around 2019-2020. NCF was the trade association for UK land-based casino operators from 2009 onwards, and it ran SENSE alongside the 7 Playing Safe Principles for member casinos. NCF was wound up in early 2020, around the time the Betting and Gaming Council was formed to represent the wider gambling industry. SENSE passed to the BGC and now operates independently. If you were enrolled through NCF, your SENSE exclusion is still valid – only the body running the scheme has changed.

A lot of what people believe about gambling isn’t supported by how the games actually work. These are the four myths we see most often:

If you find yourself thinking any of these, especially during a losing session, it’s often a sign to take a break.

Every November, UK gambling charities, operators, and industry bodies run Safer Gambling Week (also known as Responsible Gambling Week). The campaign is coordinated by the Betting and Gaming Council and supported by GamCare, BeGambleAware, and most major UK-licensed operators.

The week is a chance to raise awareness of the tools covered on this page, share stories from people affected by gambling harm, and point to the free help available through UK support organisations. Activities typically include social media campaigns, in-venue promotion at high-street betting shops, staff training, and live events with charity speakers.

We support the campaign each year by promoting the organisations involved and the tools they advocate for. The rest of this page (the tools, the help lines, the self-check) is the same information we’d share during the campaign. You don’t have to wait for November to use it.

Our position on responsible gambling shapes how we work across the rest of the site.

• When we review casinos, we look at how visible their responsible gambling tools are. Sites that bury deposit limits or self-exclusion options don’t score well in our reviews.
• We don’t use “win big” framing or suggest gambling is a way to make money. Gambling is entertainment, and we treat it that way across the site.
• Where someone needs help beyond information, we point to the organisations above rather than position ourselves as the answer.
• This page itself stays commercial-free. No affiliate links, no operator promotion. That’s a deliberate choice, and it stays.
• When UKGC rules change, the relevant sections here get updated so what you read matches what’s currently in force.

For more on our editorial independence across the site, see the About Us page.

If you’ve read this far and think gambling might be causing harm, for you or someone close, reach out today. It’s free, it’s confidential, and you don’t need to wait for things to get worse.

James Awland

Founder & Editor-in-Chief, bestcasino.co.uk · UK-based

I'm James, and I've spent over a decade trying to answer one question for UK players: which online casinos are actually worth it? I launched bestcasino.co.uk in 2015, and my team and I still sit down with every site we cover - from reading the T&Cs to testing the games, checking the RTPs, and confirming the UKGC licence - before anything goes live on the page. A Mathematical Sciences degree helps with maths. The rest we learned from playing.

We only rank what we'd play ourselves.