After careful consideration of the proposals and all the relevant evidence against the remitted criteria, the Panel recommend that the area in which a regional casino should be licensed is the City of Manchester.
The panel recommended that the areas in which large casinos should be licensed are:
- Great Yarmouth
- Milton Keynes
- Kingston-upon-Hull
- Leeds
- Middlesbrough
- Newham
- Solihull
- Southampton
and that the areas in which small casinos should be licensed are:
- Luton
- Bath and North East Somerset
- Dumfries and Galloway
- East Lindsey
- Scarborough
- Swansea
- Torbay
- Wolverhampton.
Chair of the Panel, Professor Stephen Crow, said:
“All of the seven shortlisted proposals that we examined further had their merits in their own way, could be a good test of social impact of a casino, are in need of, and could benefit from regeneration, and showed evidence of willingness to license a casino.
However our duty for the regional casino was to choose only one area that best met our criteria and – after much consideration – the panel was won over by how well the Manchester proposal in particular delivered against the full range of requirements set out in the criteria against which the judgments were made.
"The panel’s full remit was to recommend to the Secretary of State the best locations for the one regional, eight large and eight small casinos in the light of the criteria set by her. Arriving at the recommendations for all seventeen casinos required the consideration of a wealth of evidence, and we are grateful to the very large number of people who contributed to the process."
