The Prime Minister wants to hand local councils more power to reject new betting shops and Adult Gaming Centres. Andy Burnham has spoken of his desire to give local authorities more control over their high streets, promising ‘tougher powers to crack down on businesses that aren’t good for our communities.’
It turns out that the list of businesses in the PM’s crosshairs include betting shops, Adult Gaming Centres (AGCs) and vape shows, which will now face the possibility of having their applications rejected by local councillors.
Aim to Permit Axed
Burnham is treading a unique path as a prime minister that says what he’s going to do and then follows through with it, so his tweet earlier this week should have been taken as a portent of what was to follow.
Vape shops. Betting shops. Dodgy businesses.
If you look at your high street these days and think ‘who asked for this?’, you’re not alone.
I’m doing something about it. We’re giving local people and councils more control over what opens, and tougher powers to crack down on…
— Andy Burnham (@andyburnham) August 11, 2026
And that was confirmed this morning, with Burnham revealing his proposed law changes that could come into force as early as January 2027.
Under the PM’s plans, local councils will be given full veto powers on what shops can appear on their high streets – and which cannot – by scrapping the ‘Aim to Permit’ rule that was set out in the Gambling Act 2005. That rule effectively ensured all applications for bookies’ shops and AGCs were approved where they met the licensing criteria.
Burnham has already got one further than his predecessor, Keir Starmer, who reviewed Aim to Permit earlier this year but refused to scrub it from the rulebook as part of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026.
Back in January, Burnham – alongside 300 other campaigners – had called upon the former Prime Minister to reevaluate the law… something he has now done. As well as having the power to reject proposals for betting shops, authorities will be able to accept or deny planning permission from applicants wishing to open up adult gaming centres and vape shops.
It will be seen by some in the gambling sector as another blow for high street betting shops, with hundreds already closing their doors permanently this year. Replying to the planned law changes, the Betting and Gaming Council revealed its support for ‘tough action’ against the criminal element on UK high streets, but warned that it was ‘simply wrong’ to suggest that betting shops had been opening up ‘unchecked’ across the British Isles.
Death of the High Street
Of course, at the rate things are going, there won’t be any betting shops for Burnham to hound from the high street. His predecessors in the Labour government decided to hit the sector with some of the harshest tax increases in living memory, with Remote Gaming Duty almost doubling from 21% to 40% in taxation and online sports bets hit with a 10% hike from 15% to 25%.
High street bookmakers were unaffected as the former chancellor froze their level of duty paid, however many of these shops are operated by multi-division operators – that is, they make most of their money from their sites and apps, with their retail properties delivering less in the way of revenue.
So much so, shutting shops has been the cost cutting measure of choice for the likes of Paddy Power and Evoke, while Betfred announced earlier this month that they will be shutting 132 shops for good in the months ahead. As well as the empty shops on the high street causing an eyesore, there’s a very human side to this turn of events – Betfred confirming that around 600 people will lose their jobs in the company’s reshuffle, with Evoke and Paddy Power also shedding dozens of employees in 2026 so far.
Even away from the high street, things are far from peachy – Entain announcing last month that they were cutting 500 jobs from various departments… around 2% of their global staff. While many will agree that Burnham’s plans to brighten up the UK’s high streets are not without merit, solving one problem by causing another is rarely an equitable way to go about it.