UK Gambling Charities Still Waiting for Statutory Levy Money

Key Points

• Several charities provisionally awarded funding from the statutory levy’s £25.4m prevention pot have still not received any money, nearly three months after the April 2026 start date.
• OHID’s personalised KPI-linked payment system has been identified as a key source of the delays, leaving organisations running on depleted reserves.
• The financial strain has forced some successful applicants to operate without paying key staff, with the stopgap transition fund unavailable to those who won grants.

Nearly three months after the government committed to releasing funds, multiple UK gambling harm charities that won grants from the statutory levy’s prevention pot have not seen a single penny.

OHID had committed to releasing the first wave of prevention funding in April 2026. According to NEXT.io, several of the 33 voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations provisionally allocated a share of the £25.4m pot are still waiting. Others received their money only very recently, with disputes over how individual grants are structured still unresolved in certain cases.

Confirmed awards have not translated into financial stability. Some charities are working through the backlog with key staff unpaid, future planning suspended, and services running on whatever is left in the tank.

“It’s taken them a long time to do and I think a lot of organisations that have been running very close to their financial thresholds have found the last two and a half, three months really challenging to just keep limping along, not actually sure when they’re going to get paid,” one insider told NEXT.io. “Months’ worth of staffing – it’s a huge expense – and with funding confirmed, but no actual funds on hand. Nobody’s going to be feeling happy about that.”

A System Under Strain from the Start

The statutory levy replaced a voluntary industry-funded model when it commenced on 6 April 2025, pulling in close to £120m across its first year. Prevention sits with OHID; research and treatment go to UKRI and NHS England respectively.

The VCSE prevention fund application window ran from January to February 2026. On 7 April, OHID published its provisional allocations list: 33 organisations, a combined £25.4m spread across 2026 to 2028. GamCare topped the allocations at just over £4m. YGAM and Betknowmore followed at £3m and just under £3m respectively.

For many of those 33, the allocation remains just a number on a page. Insiders point to OHID’s payment structure as the root problem. Disbursements are tied to agreed performance targets, and because each set of targets is tailored to an individual organisation’s application, working through dozens of separate grant agreements has taken far longer than anticipated.

Charities met this moment at a bad time, and it has bruised them. GambleAware shut its doors on 31 March 2026 after a careful wind-down process, closing out two decades in the role of chief commissioner for gambling harm services. As the organisation moved away from an industry-funded structure, reserves across the wider sector thinned, and the shift dragged in funding gaps, widespread job losses and services that now run with less capacity than before. By the time grants were confirmed under the new statutory system, there was almost nothing left to cushion another wait.

“People were very anxious,” one source told NEXT.io. “The problem is that nobody knows what the system is, and OHID hasn’t been forthcoming with much information, and so a lot of people were just panicking – especially as these organisations have been running on the reserve.”

No Safety Net for the Successful

The government’s Gambling Levy Transition Fund was set up to support organisations that missed out on OHID grants altogether. It does not cover those who won funding. Successful applicants were locked out of that fallback, leaving them reliant entirely on OHID payments that have not arrived.

“We’ve ended up taking on more risk and hope that this eventually pans out,” a second source told the publication. “[We’ve] personally suffered financially for this. I would be surprised if other organisations weren’t in similar situations.”

A judicial review adds a further layer of complexity. Organisations excluded from the grants, including Gamban, are challenging the eligibility process in court, after the blocking software provider was refused funding on the basis that it operates as a limited company rather than a VCSE. NEXT.io understands that legal action has not driven the broader payment delays, though challenges targeting specific charities have held up individual disbursements in certain cases.

Throughout the process, OHID’s communications have come under scrutiny. Sources consistently described a lack of clear guidance, charities navigating a new and unfamiliar system with little to go on. OHID did not respond to NEXT.io’s request for comment.

What Comes Next?

OHID has signalled that lessons from this round will shape a second allocation expected for 2027-2028. A separate £12m from the statutory levy has been set aside for upper-tier local authorities in 2026-27 to fund community prevention work. For the charities currently holding services together with nothing left in reserve, that longer view offers cold comfort. The real question now is whether some organisations can stay solvent long enough to actually receive the money they were awarded, or whether the sector emerges from this transition weaker than when it entered.