The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has appointed Ruth Evans as its permanent Chair. The appointment ends a leadership vacancy of almost two years. The move fills one of three top posts left vacant at the regulator. It comes as the government prepares potentially significant reforms to the licensing regime.
For operators and suppliers, the appointment signals that DCMS is finally moving to stabilise the regulator’s leadership. Policy on advertising, affordability checks and licensing conditions, meanwhile, remains in flux.
What happened
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced on 7 September that Lisa Nandy has made a key appointment in the UK gambling sector. Ruth Evans takes the role of Chair of the Gambling Commission and becomes the Commission’s first permanent Chair in nearly two years. She will formally take up the post on 30 September. Over 18 months after the previous chair’s departure, the regulator finally has a replacement. She will join on 30 September for a five-year term
.
Evans succeeds Charles Counsell, who had been running the regulator on an interim basis.
Charles Counsell had been serving in the role of Chair on an interim basis. Marcus Boyle had departed back in January 2025
. Nandy publicly thanked her outgoing interim chair for his work steering the Commission through the gap.
Evans arrives with a background rooted in consumer protection and fraud prevention rather than gambling specifically.
Evans chairs Stop Scams UK, an initiative she founded in 2019. It unites banks, technology companies and telecom providers to combat payment fraud
. Her CV also includes stints chairing the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the Bar Standards Board. She has also sat as a non-executive director for the Serious Fraud Office, according to the official government announcement.
The appointment addresses only part of a wider staffing gap at the regulator.
It ticks off one of the three key appointments needed at the regulator. Before this appointment, it had no permanent Chair, Chief Executive Officer or Executive Director
. The Commission is still without a permanent chief executive following Andrew Rhodes’ departure earlier this year. It also lacks an executive director after Tim Miller’s exit.
Why it matters
A regulator without settled leadership is harder for the industry to engage with on policy detail, particularly when major reforms are under discussion. Evans takes charge at a moment when the framework underpinning licensing itself is under review.
In light of the announced policy to revoke the ‘aim to permit’ principle, there are question marks over whether this reform would require the creation of an entirely new gambling act
. Such questions will likely dominate much of her early agenda.
Her appointment also brings a different professional lens to the role than gambling-sector veterans might expect. Evans has framed her priorities around collaboration between regulators, industry and technology firms rather than confrontation. Operators will watch that language closely as the Commission finalises stances on affordability checks, advertising restrictions and the statutory levy funding harm research.
Suppliers and affiliates with UK exposure should take note. The Commission’s remit now sits with someone whose career has centred on financial crime and fraud reimbursement schemes for banking customers. That background could shape how the regulator approaches anti-money-laundering enforcement and payment-related compliance, areas already under scrutiny across licensed operators.
The bigger picture
The appointment lands against a backdrop of sustained turnover at DCMS-linked gambling oversight. Since Marcus Boyle’s exit in January 2025, the Commission has cycled through an interim chair while simultaneously losing its chief executive and executive director. That left strategic decisions without a fully resourced leadership team for an extended period.
That instability has coincided with mounting pressure on the UK market from multiple directions, including the Chancellor’s reported consideration of raising Machine Games Duty ahead of the Autumn Budget and ongoing debate over gambling advertising restrictions elsewhere in Europe. Readers can find more on the fiscal pressures facing UK operators in our industry news section.
With Evans now confirmed and a five-year term ahead of her, the Commission has at least one settled figure at the top table as it approaches decisions on licensing reform, the gambling levy and enforcement priorities that will shape commercial conditions for operators, suppliers and affiliates through the rest of the decade.
Sources
- SBC News – Gambling Commission’s 20 month wait for a permanent Chair ends as it hires Ruth Evans
- NEXT.io – Gambling Commission appoints Ruth Evans as Chair
- iGaming Business – Gambling Commission names fraud specialist as new full-time chair
- Focus Gaming News – Ruth Evans named British Gambling Commission chair
- GOV.UK – Ruth Evans appointed as Chair of the Gambling Commission
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