Protecting young people from the potential harmful effects of gambling is a priority for all William Hill colleagues. This has now been extended to protections around new media channels like Twitter.
William Hilloperates a "Think 21" policy which means that a challenge should be made to any individual who, on any objective view, appears to be 21 or younger. Individuals are required to produce a valid photo ID as proof of age. This policy has been developed to mean that any young customer entering a betting shop should be challenged.
William Hill, like most major operators, employ Serve Legal, the UK’s leading independent ID testing business and use the results from their extensive testing program to assess controls down to shop level. The management information is vital in setting and maintaining the high standards we set ourselves.
We have two distinct measures of success; those being the overall challenge rate and the challenge at entry rate. The overall challenge rate at William Hill is now at least the equal of other age restricted sectors like supermarkets and convenience stores. However we are now focussed on driving up the challenge on entry rate because we recognise the imperative of challenging straight away any young person who enters s betting shop before they can attempt to gamble.
There has been a lot of ill-informed discussion on this issue and whilst challenges remain for some smaller gambling operators (all sectors) to increase age verification pass rates, major operators are showing rapid incremental success in this area and are now sharing best practice. Recently our trade association, the ABB, facilitated training and testing for independent members.
Failing to operate "Think 21" is considered to be an act of gross misconduct and, absent any mitigating factors, we do, sadly, dismiss colleagues who do not perform well in this area. There are two key elements for success; those being a positive management culture and colleague commitment. There is no conflict between good business and good regulatory compliance.
Ultimately it is for individuals working within our business, following effective training, to stand up and be counted, but we do accept that the betting shop environment is challenging in some areas and that we have to consider issues like the size and layout of shops, the level of footfall and the circumstances of any breach.
Many betting shops with appropriate security, where gaming machines can be switched off remotely, can be well managed and controlled from behind the counter. Dual manning (at the wrong times) is a blunt and ineffective instrument which reduces flexibility to meet customer demand at the right times. We have made an assessment of the impact of selective single manning in our estate and there has been no negative impact on any of the key metrics we use to assess risk.
William Hillalso takes its health and safety responsibilities very seriously which means lowering risk to the lowest practicable level. This means making an assessment of the time, cost and effort of implementing particular harm mitigation measures judged against common sense standards.
Recently we have started to roll out state of the art conflict management training to ensure colleagues (no matter what their level of experience) can deal with a range of situations that may occur within their working day.
We value our people who are the key to us delivering a great customer experience in our betting shops. Those colleagues are the ones who help us deliver on our regulatory responsibilities and help promote the responsible gambling agenda.
We have many great people working for us who are now fed up with their industry being kicked around as a political football. They feel that it is about time that the social worth of regulated community betting shops was recognised; especially when on an objective assessment, the betting industry is rising to the challenge of a reduced public sector that has traditionally supported us in our regulatory role.
Implementing policies to close betting shops is certainly not the answer to deal with the challenge of illegal gambling in our inner cities.
Andrew Lyman, Head of Public Affairs and UK Compliance, William Hill