Licence Lens is an independent information site about betting in the United Kingdom. We do not take bets, we are not the Gambling Commission, and we do not sell or recommend any operator. Our single aim is to help UK adults understand the rules that govern betting so that they can judge a site on evidence rather than advertising.
We were founded on a simple frustration. The information a person most needs before depositing, whether a site is genuinely licensed and what protections that brings, is often the hardest to find, while promotions are everywhere. This site puts the regulation first.
Our purpose
Our purpose is to make the licensing system legible. We explain how to verify an operator on the Gambling Commission's public register, what the Gambling Act 2005 and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice actually require, and what regulatory action and fines signify. Everything is written for a general reader, not a lawyer.
We never tell anyone to sign up or to bet. Where we describe a rule, such as the credit-card ban or the online slot stake limits, it is so you can recognise whether a site is following it.
Independence and how we are funded
We accept no advertising from bookmakers and carry no affiliate links to operators, so nothing on this site is influenced by a commission on your custom. That independence is the whole point; a guide to spotting an unsafe site is worthless if it is paid to send you somewhere. Our running costs are modest and are met independently of the gambling industry.
Because we take no operator money, we can say plainly when a practice falls short of the rules, and we can put safer gambling ahead of any commercial interest.
How we research and review
Our guides are written by Rowan Petrie and draw on primary sources, chiefly the Gambling Commission's published guidance and register, the Gambling Act 2005 and official announcements about reforms. Content on this site is reviewed by Eleanor Vance, a gambling-regulatory solicitor, whose role is to check that our explanations of the law and the licence conditions are accurate and current.
Where the rules are changing, we say so and give the dates, so that a reader can tell settled law from a reform still being phased in.
Rowan Petrie, writer
Rowan has spent more than a decade reporting on and analysing gambling regulation in Great Britain. That work has meant reading Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice line by line as they were revised, tracking public enforcement notices and the reasons operators were fined, and following the reforms of 2024, 2025 and 2026 from consultation through to the rules that finally took effect. Rowan has spent a good deal of time inside the Commission's public register, checking business names, trading names and domains against live entries, and has walked ordinary bettors through that same search often enough to know exactly where people get stuck. The aim on this site is to turn that first-hand familiarity with the paperwork into plain guidance a reader can act on in minutes.
Eleanor Vance, reviewer
Eleanor is a gambling-regulatory solicitor with over fifteen years in regulatory law, much of it spent on licensing and compliance in the betting and gaming sector. Her working life has involved advising on licence applications and variations, responding to Commission reviews and enforcement action, and drafting and stress-testing the customer terms that decide how bets are settled and how disputes are handled. She has seen at close quarters how a poorly worded term or a slow withdrawal process turns into a complaint, and how the alternative dispute resolution route actually plays out for a customer. Eleanor reviews every guide here so that what we say about the Gambling Act 2005, the licence conditions and the complaints framework is legally accurate and reflects current practice, not last year's rules.
Keeping information current
Gambling regulation moves quickly, with meaningful changes in 2024, 2025 and 2026 alone. We review our pages regularly and record the date each one was last checked. If you spot something that has fallen out of date, we would rather hear about it than leave a reader with the wrong impression.
Nothing here is legal or financial advice. It is general information to help you understand the system and make your own checks.
Contact us
We welcome corrections, questions about how the rules work, and feedback on our guides. We cannot intervene in a dispute with an operator, but we can point you to the right route, whether that is the operator's complaints process, its alternative dispute resolution provider, or the Gambling Commission.
If gambling has stopped being fun, free confidential support is available 24 hours a day from the GamCare National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133. For anything about this site, including corrections reviewed by Eleanor Vance, our gambling-regulatory solicitor, you can reach us at [email protected].