Sarah Gardner on why the Gambling Commission is ‘difficult to leave’

Sarah Gardner’s career at the Gambling Commission spans almost 17 years across various roles, but what has kept her at the regulator is the diversity of challenge presented by gambling sector.

Speaking to iGB’s sister publication GGB recently, Gardner said: “From a regulatory standpoint it’s a really interesting sector because you’re really trying to strike the right balance between enabling people to enjoy what they enjoy doing in their leisure time, while making sure there are protections for those that need it.

“It’s why I’ve never left. [In this time] I’ve done most of the jobs actually around the senior table at the Commission.”

Today Gardner acts as interim CEO for the regulator, following the departure of former chief Andrew Rhodes, who left the post in February.

There have been a number of changes across the Commission’s senior leadership team this year, as director of policy Tim Miller also revealed his intention to exit in June.

Seaking at iGB Live in July, Miller reflected fondly on his ten years with the regulator. Amid a slight reshuffle, part of his remit will be taken over by Sarah Fox, a senior civil servant from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in September.

Despite the season of change at the Commission, Gardner jokingly describes herself as a “Gambling Commission lifer”.

“The Commission’s proved quite difficult to leave. I think there is always a new challenge. Someone once described it to me as gambling regulation is utterly seductive. And I’m not sure I get that far, but it certainly keeps you really interested,” she explained.

“The approach I’m trying to foster more and more at the Commission [is to be] more creative and not always reach for the blunt instrument.”

‘Regulation is a thankless task’

However, her time at the regulatory body has been peppered with challenges, particularly amid sector and political backlash to specific white paper and Gambling Act 2005 review updates.

“Regulation can be a pretty thankless task because you can never please all the people. I can’t think of any announcement I’ve ever made where I haven’t had one half of the debate saying: ‘oh that doesn’t go far enough’. And the other half saying: ‘oh, it might go too far’. That can actually be a bit of an indicator that you’re broadly in the right place,” says Gardner.

Particuarly polarising for the sector has been the Commission’s approach to affordability checks, also known as financial risk assessments (FRAs).

A pilot was carried out in 2025, which saw high spending players across a number of tier one operators flagged for additional credit checks by independent agencies.

The Commission delayed its update on the measure this year, before confirming in July that it would be brought in formally via a phased approach. This was met with pushback from various corners of the sector, as well as the horse racing industry and politicians.

“What we’re currently doing on financial risk assessments, controversial though that it is, is a really good example of striking a balance [between player enjoyment and consumer protection] because that is about finding a more sophisticated way than currently exists to hone in on the consumers who actually need the support,” Gardner says of the policy.

“So you don’t have to ask a much larger sample of consumers for [additional] documents, which strikes me as frankly too intrusive for what’s meant to be a leisure activity.”