Bookmakers- do they break the law?

[Nathan Hughes]

Stomach churning read.
Customers always right my arse

Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026

[stevecaution]

I was a betting shop manager between 1989 and 1998 but I witnessed the destruction of the manager who replaced me in my local betting office.

We started out about the same time and he became my deputy.

Back then it mostly about horses, football and greyhounds for turnover and there was a break without any live events, that meant you could leave a cashier in charge for an hour, a valuable break period, as back then you had to manually settle every single bet and monitor running on money in multiples on a race-by-race basis.

Violence existed back then as well. I had only been in the job a few months before I learned of a betting shop manageress who had had her face blown off with a shotgun and all for a paltry few hundred pounds by a criminal who had visions of a huge lift based on the bookies having a million pound limit. As if a firm kept that in the safe of every branch just in case some jammy dick lands a twenty horse acca of an afternoon but as the saying goes, “You can’t educate pork”

In my opinion the advent of Night Racing and Sunday Racing changed the game. The company suddenly had a lot more hours to fill and didn’t want to spend money in doing so. It quickly became the case that someone would have to single man the shop after 6pm.

Around about the same time AWP machines came in as a forerunner to the FOBT’s and we started getting racing beamed in from abroad, meaning that there was no scope for an hour without some event going off live. It quickly became clear that you wouldn’t get ten minutes peace, far less an hour. All sorts of lottery draws came in to combat the competition from the National Lottery and scratchcards. Shops became more like casinos and the Racing Post and Sporting Life pages on the walls became redundant, as punters ran like headless chickens from event to event, with no opportunity to study the form of an upcoming race.

I was lucky that I never faced actual physical assault but there were numerous threats and plenty of unsavoury characters. Some people clearly had alcohol and drug problems, whereas others were mentally unstable. I had to have the Police physically remove some of them from the premises and it’s a depressing feeling when that happens, no matter how hard you try to be positive.

At least when these things happened and there were two of you manning the shop, you could bounce these events off each other and support one another through humour and empathy. However, when you are manning on your own, it’s a lonely and frightening feeling that people should not have to face single handedly.

When I got out of the game the chap who replaced me started to face relentless stress. Systems were not updated, meaning manual settling was still the order of the day and there was never any time to get a meaningful break. He, like myself ended up working 7 days of 11 hour shifts on the trot in order to keep the wages bill down in the shop.

The rise of the machines and the relentless opportunity to lose money on an event every two minutes took their toll and he spiralled into a life of drinking and gambling himself, running up huge debts. The shop was discovered to have “financial irregularities” and he was dismissed. The same company had at least 4 managers who went the same way. One of them wore a tag and was under curfew after more than £50,000 was found missing in the shop accounts.

It’s a poisonous atmosphere in bookies these days in my opinion. It attracts the worst of society in what has become a slow leaching of money from Punter pocket into Bookies coffers. You cannot beat the machines, as long as there is sufficient throughput the house is guaranteed to win. Players require zero skill and in that sense it puts them in a level playing field with someone who knows their horses and has studied all aspects of the form. There is no thinking required, just pick a number and you can outpoint the smart arse who can name the strike rate of every jockey on the card, right off the top of their head.

Zero skill, zero thinking, zero hope long term but it’s what the plebs want.

Eighteen years out of the job now and it’s the best move I ever made. The shops are dinosaurs for the low intelligence desperadoes these days. The FOBT’s should be paying out in books and deodorants for the scum.

Thanks for the good crack. Time for me to move on. Be lucky.

[robert99]

It is surprising the Heath and Safety Executive have not prosecuted over this.
The risks are obvious and are not managed, which is illegal.
Once death or injury occurs it is proven that the risks are real and not managed.
Cost cuting and staff bullying to keep things quiet are also illegal if it effects the safety of staff.

Some of the key requirements of health and safety law can be summarised very briefly as follows:

A – Employers

1. General Duty of Care
All employers have a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of their employees. They also have a duty to protect non-employees from risks arising out of their work activities. [Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, hereafter HSWA 1, Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, hereafter MHSW 2.

2. Health and Safety Management System
Employers must take and give effect to adequate arrangements for the effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of protective and preventive measures. They must record these arrangements (where five or more are employed) – for example, as part of their health and safety policy statement (see below). [MHSW]

3. Safety Policy Statement
A written policy statement must be prepared (if five or more persons are employed) covering the employer’s organisation and arrangements in force for ensuring health and safety. It must be brought to the attention of all employees. [HSWA]

4. Competent Persons
An adequate number of ‘competent’ persons have to be appointed, with sufficient time and resources at their disposal, to assist the employer to comply with his legal duties and to implement emergency arrangements (see below). Competent health and safety advisers can be either employees with appropriate qualifications and experience or professionally qualified consultants. [MHSW]

5. Risk Assessment
‘Suitable and sufficient’ risk assessments must be carried out by the employer. The purpose is to identify hazards, assess the probability that harm may arise from them and evaluate the effectiveness of control measures. [MHSW] (This duty is elaborated in regulations dealing with specific hazards and issues e.g. substances hazardous to health, hereafter COSHH 3, and Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations, hereafter DSE 4).

6. Tackling Risks at Source
The workplace must be made safe without risks to health. So far as is reasonably practicable, accidents and work related health damage should be prevented by tackling risks at source, using engineering means in preference to systems of work, personal protective equipment only being an acceptable alternative where risks cannot be controlled by such other means. [MHSW, ACoP].

7. Information, Instruction, Training and Supervision
Employees must be given comprehensible information, instruction, training and supervision necessary to ensure their health and safety and that of others. [HSWA, MHSW and other regulations e.g. COSHH].

10. Health Surveillance
Arrangements should be made for any necessary health surveillance of employees and appropriate records should be kept. [MHSW, COSHH, CAW, CLAW and IR]

12. Personal Protective Equipment
Where risks cannot be controlled at source (see point 6 above), appropriate personal protective clothing and/or equipment should be provided free of charge. [HSWA and Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 11]

15. Emergency Arrangements
Adequate emergency arrangements must be in place under the control of ‘competent persons’. There must also be suitable procedures for employees to report serious and imminent danger as well as shortcomings in health and safety arrangements. [MHSW]

18. Reporting and Recording
Accidental injuries, dangerous occurrences and notifiable occupational diseases should be reported to the appropriate enforcing authority and records kept. Records also have to be kept of the results of workplace environmental monitoring, health surveillance and maintenance etc. [Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations, (RIDDOR) 19, COSHH]

From 6 April 2012, Parliamentary approval, RIDDOR’s reporting requirement changed. The trigger point increased from over three days’ to over seven days’ incapacitation (not counting the day on which the accident happened).

19. Safety Representatives, Safety Committees and Consultation
Employers must consult their workforce on health and safety matters. When the employer recognises a trade union, that union has the right to appoint safety representatives who must be consulted on all matters affecting the health and safety of employees they represent and be permitted to carry out their functions. If requested to do so, the employer must establish a joint safety committee. Safety representatives are entitled to paid time off to attend TUC or union approved training courses. [Health and Safety: Consultation with Employees Regulations 20] [Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 21]

20. Insurance
All employers must have specific insurance to provide compensation to employees following successful civil law claims for damages in the event of work related injury or damage to health.

[yeats]

We should have followed Ireland’s excellent example and never allowed FOBT’s in betting shops in the first place.

Now, it’s much more difficult to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted but we should at least aim for a maximum stake of £2.

Many shops have only opened to facilitate these machines and would be no loss if closed especially with them not laying 2 bananas to a banana on racing.

If it affects horse racing sobeit, it would be just another penalty racing has to pay for allowing itself to be ruled by bookmakers.

It’s the greater good that counts not the small matter of bookmakers profits and horse racing.

[Author]

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