- The Cumbria and Lancashire Public Health Collaborative worked with the LGA to review its work on gambling harm
- With money due from the gambling levy, the collaborative wanted to make sure it was in a strong position to maximise use of the extra resourcing
- The collaborative say the support they received has given it a platform to build on and are now planning to implement some of the learning
The Cumbria and Lancashire Public Health Collaborative is a team of people from across the region who work on public and population health. It incorporates five councils, the local NHS, academics and regional leads for NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency. The collaborative is coordinated by two officers and hosted by Blackburn with Darwen Council.
The LGA provided support to the collaborative during the summer and autumn of 2025, focussed on gambling-related harm. Gambling is increasingly being seen as a public health problem. It is linked to higher rates of financial difficulties, relationship problems and mental and physical ill-health. Government research estimates one in 200 people are classed as problems gamblers with one in 25 at elevated risk. The north west is one of the regions with the highest rates.
Programme Manager Rebecca Ramsay says: “The collaborative normally has two or three major priorities – things like smoking – so an issue like gambling can struggle to get the attention it deserves because of competing priorities.”
But she says with the gambling levy diverting extra resources to public health teams to spend on tackling gambling-related harm, the collaborative felt it would be good to look at what was being done and how the support and work being done in this area could be improved.
“Each public health team was doing its own thing. We knew there was lots of good practice, but we wanted to see how we could build on that and to see where exactly our strengths and weaknesses were to make the best use of the money that was going to be made available.”
The roadmap to improvement
Two peers were provided to work with the collaborative. One was a former Director of Public Health, while the other was a public health registrar who has worked in the voluntary sector and has lived-experienced having seen a member of their family affected by gambling harm.
The collaborative identified more than 20 people for the peers to interview ranging from those working public health and the NHS to close partners in the voluntary sector. There were 14 individual interview sessions – some of the participants were interviewed together. Each lasted one hour and were done remotely in summer 2025.
The peers then produced a detailed power-point report which was presented to the collaborative’s leadership group two months after the initial interviews were carried out.
It covered six key themes:
- strategic leadership and partnerships
- prevention and regulation
- community engagement and inclusion
- population insights and system improvement
- integrated treatment and support
- operational partnerships.
Strengths and areas for consideration were set out for each theme. For example, it noted that while gambling was becoming embedded in wider strategies, such as mental health and addiction, in some councils, in others activity relied more on the enthusiasm of a few individuals. And it said there was no consistent approach across the five councils in areas such as safeguarding, licensing and planning and no comprehensive approach to gambling advertising.
It said overall services often lacked visibility and easy access with residents and professionals alike sometimes struggling to find help. Engagement of certain groups, such as ethnic minority communities and those in rural areas, was particularly low. What is more, it warned a lingering stigma around gambling addiction could discourage people from seeking help and influence how decision-makers perceive the issue.
But it also highlighted examples of good practice, praising where communities were being engaged through awareness campaigns, including collaborations with helplines like Samaritans, social prescribing link workers and peer support initiatives. And it praised how housing services staff were being trained to ask about gambling, while another council had worked with probation teams to strain them on how to recognise and respond to problem gambling.
‘We’ve a platform to build on’
Collaborative Programme Manager Rebecca Ramsay said the input of the LGA has been really invaluable. “We would probably have had this conversation, but would we have got to where we have now as quickly and with as much honesty? I don’t think so. Having that expertise and capacity and having someone externally challenging us is good. It’s not always easy to have these conversations internally.”
She said she believes the collaborative now has a “platform to build on” and to give gambling the priority and focus it deserves.
The collaborative is planning a workshop in spring 2026 to help set out a new vision for its approach to tackling gambling harm. With the levy allocations confirmed, they have agreed to discuss options around pooling some funding to help move forward on the issue.
“Pooling funding could be a good option to have impact – we aren't talking about huge amounts of money in our sub region, so we will be limited,” said Ms Ramsay. “But it will be good to get going on this. It took a little while to get confirmation of levy so we have lost a little bit of momentum. But we are excited to get going – it’s such an important public health issue.”