Prior to the Gambling Act 2005, the government undertook a triennial review of the maximum stake and prize limits for gaming machines. The review largely focused on whether stake and prize limits should be increased in line with inflation. The last such review before the 2005 Act was in 2001 www.onlinecasinoluxembourg.com/testberichte/22bet/.

In October 2005, when the 2005 Act had been enacted but before the regulation-making powers had been brought into force, Ministers used their still extant powers under the Gaming Act 1968 to increase some of these stake and prize limits.83 In July 2007 Ministers used their powers under section 236 of the 2005 Act, which by then was in force, to make the Categories of Gaming Machines Regulations 200784 which refined the definitions of the categories of gaming machines and set fresh (and higher) maximum stakes and prize limits from 1 September 2007, the date on which the Act came fully into force. These limits were further revised for some categories (again upward) in 200985 and 2011.

In January 2012 John Penrose MP, then Minister for Tourism and Heritage at the DCMS, told the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that the Government were “launching a triennial review of stakes and prizes, which has been much called for”.

A year later, in January 2013, the Government launched The Gambling Act 2005: Triennial Review of Gaming Machine State and Prize Limits, which stated that the Government had “decided to implement a more coherent approach to stake and prize regulation based on the previous triennial review system.”88 It took advice from the Gambling Commission, which in turn took advice from the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board.89 In line with that advice, some stakes and prizes were again increased.90