Gambling Policy – open for consultation – have your say

Released: Wednesday 2 February 2022

Consultation page with all documents available here.

Council has reviewed its Gambling Class 4 and TAB Venue Policy (Gambling Policy) and a draft is open for public consultation from Wednesday 2 February to Friday 4 March.

The review includes no major changes.

“Council’s Gambling Policy already has a Sinking Lid regime and we are proposing to continue with this approach,” said Lavinia Laaiva, Council’s Environmental Health Technical Officer. “A Sinking Lid regime ensures that both numbers of venues and numbers of machines reduces over time.

“Since the last review in 2017 there has been a decrease of two venues and 18 machines in the district.”

The relocation of venue clause and merger clauses remain unchanged.

The objectives of the Policy are to control the growth of gambling, minimise harm caused by gambling, limit the number of venues and machines, avoid concentrations of venues, enable people to participate in gambling practices should they wish and enable funding and grants for South Waikato groups and organisations.

As part of its review of this Policy Council has conducted an independent Social Impact Assessment.

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