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The regulations are part of a package that amends restrictions applying to some gaming products, giving casinos greater freedom about what they can offer customers.聽 The package is intended to modernise the rules that apply to casinos and to help the sector to grow, while ensuring that appropriate safeguards against gambling-related harm are in place.聽 The regulations make two small changes to provide consistency between small and large casinos, including alignment of the machine-to-table ratios, increasing the ratio in small casinos from 2:1 to 5:1.

The nature of the regulations means that they would not impose a disproportionate implementation cost on small, micro or medium-sized businesses, which are not exempt. 聽As the regulations are permissive and deregulatory, they are likely to be beneficial to small, micro and medium businesses also as they would choose to invest in additional machines only where the benefit of doing so would exceed the cost. 聽The IA notes, however, that operators are less likely to be small and micro businesses due to the amount of capital and numbers of staff they need to operate. 聽Given the largest cost to business is purchasing and installing new gaming machines, which is linked to the overall size of casinos, the IA explains that this cost is likely to increase with the size of the business.聽 Similarly, the benefits are likely to be greater for larger operators as they are more likely to have the physical space and financial ability to invest in new machines.

Costs to business include for familiarisation, and purchasing and implementing additional gaming machines. 聽Benefits to business are increased gross gambling yield for casinos and unquantified benefits to gaming machine suppliers and manufacturers. 聽The IA estimates that the regulations would have an equivalent annual net direct cost to business of -拢31 million. The total benefit to business over the ten-year appraisal period is estimated to be 拢271 million.

The provides a sufficient level of assessment of direct impacts on business and monetises these where possible. 聽The IA should, however, provide a more robust, balanced assessment of societal costs because of the risk of increased gambling harm, as well as providing more narrative on international evidence. 聽Given the reliance on findings from consultation, the IA should provide more detail on the characteristics of consultation respondents.