Support and where to speak to someone today

Reach someone today: GamCare on 0808 8020 133

The National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 is the single starting point for anyone in Great Britain who is worried about gambling, whether her own or someone else's. The line is operated by GamCare, the leading charitable provider of support for people affected by gambling harm, incorporated at Companies House under charity number 1060005, and it is staffed twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, including public holidays and out-of-hours periods.

Calls are free of charge from any UK landline or mobile, are confidential unless the caller chooses to identify herself, and are answered by trained advisers who are not employed by any gambling operator and who receive no commission of any kind for referrals into treatment.

The line also carries a live-chat channel and a WhatsApp thread, both staffed by the same trained advisers on the same twenty-four-hour basis, for callers who prefer a text-based conversation to a voice call. British Sign Language interpretation is available on request through the SignVideo relay service, and translation into the principal community languages of Great Britain is arranged through Language Line where a caller's first language is not English.

From a legal perspective the helpline sits at the intersection of the public-health response to gambling harm and the regulatory response to gambling licensees. It is funded in part through the Statutory Levy under the Gambling Levy Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/152), in force from 6 April 2025, and in part through the historic voluntary funding stream administered by GambleAware.

The record of a call to the line is kept by GamCare under its own retention policy, is protected by the confidentiality obligations of the sector and is not shared with any gambling operator, any regulator or any employer of the caller. A first call is not a referral into treatment; it is a conversation about what is happening, what the options are and what a next step might look like.

The caller is free to end the call at any point and is not obliged to provide any personal detail she does not wish to provide. The helpline sits outside the disclosure obligations that attach to a regulated financial-services firm under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and outside the notification obligations that attach to a UKGC licensee under LCCP 15; a call to the line is not, and will not become, a record on any regulator's file.

BeGambleAware and its educational resources

BeGambleAware, the operating name of GambleAware, is the education and self-help charity that funds the National Gambling Helpline, commissions research into gambling harm and runs the national public-awareness campaign in Great Britain. It is a registered charity, number 1093910, and it operates independently of the gambling industry despite the historic funding stream that flowed from voluntary operator contributions.

The published research library at begambleaware.org includes commissioned work on affordability, on the interaction between problem gambling and problem debt, on the demographic distribution of harm and on the effect of specific interventions such as deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. From April 2025 the historic voluntary funding stream has been progressively replaced by the Statutory Levy under SI 2025/152, and the shape of the charity's funding base is expected to change materially over the three-year phase-in.

The self-help resources at begambleaware.org include a self-assessment questionnaire based on the Problem Gambling Severity Index, a household budgeting tool, a bank-block guide covering the switching processes of the five largest UK retail banks, and a directory of local support services. The material is written in plain English and does not require any prior specialist knowledge.

From a legal perspective the resources sit at the informational end of the help spectrum and are not a substitute for a conversation with a clinician or with a helpline adviser. They are, however, a useful preparatory step for a reader who wishes to think through her situation before making a call.

BeGambleAware also publishes an annual report and financial statements at Companies House and at the Charity Commission register, together with an independent research board's minutes, and the transparency of that governance model is one of the reasons the sector recognises the charity as a credible funder of front-line services.

A worked example

A reader who is uncertain whether her gambling has reached a level of concern completes the Problem Gambling Severity Index self-assessment at begambleaware.org and receives a score in the moderate-risk category. She reads the accompanying guidance, prints the household-budgeting worksheet and, over the following week, tracks her spending.

At the end of the week she calls the National Gambling Helpline for a conversation about what she has recorded. The adviser refers her to a GamCare partner service in her region for a first appointment, and provides information about the NHS specialist clinic in her nearest regional centre. No commitment is required at any step.

Treatment through the NHS gambling clinics

The National Health Service commissions a network of specialist gambling clinics across Great Britain, funded in part through the Statutory Levy from 6 April 2025 and in part through general NHS commissioning under the Health and Care Act 2022. The National Problem Gambling Clinic, part of the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, is the flagship service in England and has operated since 2008.

Regional clinics operate in Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Southampton and Stoke-on-Trent, together with the Northern Gambling Service that covers Yorkshire and the north-east. The Southern Gambling Service serves the south coast. All clinics accept self-referral, meaning a GP letter is not a precondition to a first appointment.

A first appointment is typically available within four weeks of self-referral, though waiting times vary by region. Treatment is delivered by a multidisciplinary team that may include psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and financial-support workers. The clinical approach is typically cognitive behavioural therapy adapted for gambling disorder, sometimes with medication support for co-occurring conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Treatment is free of charge to the patient at the point of delivery, in the ordinary NHS manner. From a legal perspective the confidentiality obligations of the NHS attach to the treatment record in the ordinary way and the material is not shared with any gambling operator or with any regulator.

The Caldicott principles govern the handling of patient-identifiable information, and disclosure outside the clinical team requires either the patient's consent, a court order or a statutory basis under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. A patient who is separately involved in Commission licence-review proceedings, in matrimonial financial-remedy proceedings or in personal insolvency proceedings retains the ordinary right to withhold consent to the disclosure of her clinical record in those separate proceedings, subject to any order the court sees fit to make.

Local support groups and peer assistance

Peer-support networks operate alongside the clinical services and the helpline, and provide a different kind of help in a different setting. Gamblers Anonymous is the longest-established peer-support fellowship in Great Britain and runs face-to-face meetings in every large town and city, on a twelve-step model that is familiar from other anonymous fellowships.

Meetings are free, open to any person who has a desire to stop gambling and require no advance booking. A parallel fellowship, Gam-Anon, exists for family members and partners of those affected by gambling. Both fellowships publish their meeting directories at their national websites and neither requires personal identification of any kind at the door.

Online meetings run alongside the face-to-face format and have grown steadily since 2020; the anonymity is preserved through first-name introductions and there is no obligation on any attendee to speak at any meeting she attends.

GamCare itself commissions a network of partner services across Great Britain, including Adferiad Recovery in Wales, RCA Trust in Scotland, Gordon Moody residential treatment in England and Krysallis, EPIC and Aquarius in various regional footprints. Each partner service provides face-to-face and remote counselling at no cost to the client, in some cases with waiting times of only a few days.

The choice between clinical treatment through the NHS, peer support through a fellowship and counselling through a GamCare partner is a matter of what suits the individual; many people combine two or more routes at different times. In terms of formal regulation, counsellors working in gambling-specific services are typically registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy or the UK Council for Psychotherapy, and the ethical frameworks of those bodies govern the conduct of the clinical relationship, including confidentiality, boundaries and the handling of any disclosure of harm.

Family support and how to open the conversation

The conversation between a concerned other and a person who is gambling is one of the most difficult conversations to open and one of the most useful conversations to have. The National Gambling Helpline accepts calls from family members, partners, adult children, siblings, friends and colleagues who are worried about someone else's gambling, and a first call from a concerned other is often the point at which a family finds a starting position on what to do next.

The adviser cannot disclose whether the person has previously called the line and cannot compel any action on the person's part, but can provide information, resources and referral routes that the caller is free to share. From a legal-analysis perspective the confidentiality obligations of the adviser are broadly analogous to those of a solicitor: the adviser cannot lawfully disclose the fact of a call to a third party, save in narrow circumstances such as a risk to life or a safeguarding referral required by law.

GamCare operates a dedicated family-and-friends programme that provides one-to-one counselling and structured group work for concerned others, funded in the same way as the mainstream helpline services. Gam-Anon meetings, described in section four above, provide a peer-support setting for partners and family members. The financial dimension of a household affected by gambling losses is often as pressing as the emotional dimension, and the Citizens Advice service, together with StepChange and PayPlan, provides free debt advice under the Money and Pensions Service framework.

Where the household is close to formal insolvency, the routes under the Insolvency Act 1986 (a debt relief order, an individual voluntary arrangement or bankruptcy in the last resort) sit within scope of that advice. In matrimonial or civil-partnership contexts, undisclosed gambling losses that surface during financial-remedy proceedings under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 or the Civil Partnership Act 2004 can, in appropriate cases, be treated by the court as add-back or reckless-dissipation matters; specialist family-law advice is essential in that setting and the routes described here do not substitute for it.

A worked example

A partner who has discovered undisclosed gambling losses in a joint account calls the National Gambling Helpline for a first conversation. The adviser signposts the family-and-friends programme at GamCare, provides the local Citizens Advice contact for a debt-review appointment and offers the referral route to the nearest NHS specialist gambling clinic for the family member concerned.

The partner then arranges a conversation at home, with the shared information ready to hand, and the family member concerned agrees to a first appointment at the clinic. The whole sequence has taken under a fortnight and has not cost the household any money beyond a first Citizens Advice appointment that is itself free.

Money controls: deposit limits, blocks, stop-loss

The practical money tools available to a British adult who wishes to reduce her gambling risk are numerous and, in the main, straightforward to enable. On UKGC-licensed remote gambling accounts, deposit limits, loss limits, session limits, time-outs and reality checks are available on the operator's own dashboard and are enforceable against the licensee under LCCP 3.

The Commission's affordability framework, tightened through the 2023 White Paper reforms and implemented through the 2024 and 2025 licence-condition amendments, adds a further layer of financial-vulnerability checks at higher-spending thresholds. On the retail-banking side, the card-level gambling switch offered by HSBC, Monzo, Starling, Lloyds and Barclays is treated in detail on the KYC and payments page.

Device-level blocking software, notably BetBlocker and GamBan, is available free of charge for smartphone, tablet and desktop use and is funded through the charitable sector. Mobile network content bars offered by EE, O2, Three and Vodafone add a network-layer filter to gambling categories. The combination of a bank-level card switch, a device-level block and a mobile-network content bar produces a substantial reduction in the technical availability of gambling and is compatible with a live GamStop registration for the licensed market.

The tools are cumulative, not alternatives, and the cost of enabling them is zero. Where the household includes a joint account, both account holders can activate a card-level switch on the joint card, and a concerned other can accompany the account holder to a branch or to the in-app support channel to work through the switching flow together; the bank cannot enable the switch on the request of one account holder alone in respect of another's individual card, but can do so on a card issued to both parties on a joint account.

Assisting a friend who is gambling offshore

Where a concerned other has become aware that a friend is playing at an offshore operator, the correct starting point is a conversation about the reason for the offshore transaction rather than a confrontation about the operator itself. A person who has moved to an offshore operator is, in most cases, a person who has an existing GamStop registration in place and who is looking to defeat the protective purpose of that registration; that is a signal about the underlying urge rather than a signal about the operator's licensing status.

The routes into help set out in the earlier sections of this page are the appropriate response, and the National Gambling Helpline is the right first call, whether the concerned other or the friend makes it.

The financial dimension is often the more immediate concern. Offshore deposits carry no consumer-protection floor, no fund-segregation guarantee and no ADR jurisdiction, as set out on the consumer-protection risks page. A concerned other who has visibility of the friend's account (typically a partner in a joint account or an adult child of an elderly parent) can help by enabling the card-level gambling switch, by installing device-level blocking software and by supporting a conversation with a debt adviser at Citizens Advice, StepChange or PayPlan.

Where fraud is suspected (for example a purported removal service that has taken money for nothing), the reporting route is Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk under the Fraud Act 2006. Where the friend is a family member in a vulnerable position (an elderly relative, an adult with a learning disability, a person subject to a lasting power of attorney), the routes under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 may become relevant, and a solicitor with a private-client practice can advise on the interaction between capacity, financial abuse and the safeguarding duties of a local authority under the Care Act 2014.

What a first call to the helpline entails

A first call to the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 typically lasts between fifteen and forty-five minutes, though the adviser will stay on the line for as long as the caller wishes. There is no script the adviser is required to follow, no upsell of any product, no attempt to move the caller into any specific programme against her wishes and no reference in the conversation to any gambling operator by name.

The tone is professional, unhurried and, above all, respectful of the caller's own account of what has been happening. The adviser will ask, in a conversational way, what has prompted the call, what has been happening recently and what the caller would like from the conversation.

The adviser will not press for personal detail and will accept a first name only, or an alias, if the caller prefers. The adviser will not make any judgement about the situation and will not challenge the caller's account of what has been happening.

Toward the end of the call the adviser will typically offer a short summary of the options that appear relevant. Those options may include a further conversation, a referral to a GamCare partner service for face-to-face or remote counselling, a self-referral route to the nearest NHS specialist clinic, a Citizens Advice appointment for debt issues and, where relevant, information about the GamStop scheme and the routes described on the cancelling GamStop page.

The caller is free to take any, all or none of the options. A follow-up call is welcome at any point and does not require any advance booking. The line is not a crisis line only; it is a first port of call for any conversation about gambling, at any stage of concern.

Where the caller is in an immediate mental-health crisis, the adviser will remain on the line and will support a warm transfer to the Samaritans on 116 123 or to NHS 111 as appropriate, and in cases of immediate danger the adviser will support a call to 999.

The line is not a mental-health emergency service, but it is a route into the services that are, and the advisers are trained to make that route.

Read next

• What GamStop is and how it actually works
• Legality for UK players and where UKGC remit ends
• Consumer-protection risks of offshore sites
• KYC, AML and payment realities for UK players
• Cancelling GamStop the right way

Frequently asked questions