Guidance

Gambling Levy Transition Fund: application guidance

Published 26 March 2026

Applies to England

Purpose of the fund

The transition from the previous voluntary, industry-funded arrangements to the new statutory gambling levy is likely to result in changes to the existing delivery landscape. It is the intention of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to ensure that there is an effective transition between these arrangements, ensuring service users and beneficiary groups are not negatively affected by this period of change.

DCMS therefore intends to make available grant funding to organisations delivering  prevention or treatment of gambling harm provision funded by the previous voluntary system but who have not been successful in securing funding from the statutory gambling levy.

Funding will be for a period of 3 months, starting from 1 April 2026, to ensure that there is no break or gap in provision during this period of transition.

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible to bid for funding organisations must meet the following criteria:

a. They must have been using funding from the industry-funded voluntary system between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2026. Evidence of such arrangements will usually be provided by way of a grant offer letter or contract covering this period.

b. They must have been delivering relevant activity in March 2026 in support of service users and/or beneficiary groups in England who may be affected by the period of transition. 

c. They must have bid for funding from the Gambling Levy via the Gambling Harms Prevention VCSE Grant Fund and/or the Gambling Harms Treatment VCSE Grant Fund and had their application(s) entirely rejected. You may apply to the Gambling Levy Transition Fund before You have received notification of the outcome of Your request for funding from the Gambling Harms Treatment VCSE Grant Fund. However we will not make a decision to award You funding from the Gambling Levy Transition Fund until You provide evidence to us that Your request for Gambling Levy funding has been rejected.

d. DCMS is making these funds available using the powers set out in section 70 of the Charities Act 2006. To be eligible to apply for the Fund, organisations must therefore be charities, or charitable, benevolent, or philanthropic in purpose.

You should also take note of which costs are not considered to be eligible expenditure (Section 4).

Length of funding

Funding for successful applicants will commence on 1 April 2026 and will end on 30 June 2026.  Where decisions on awards are made after 1 April 2026, successful applicants will be able to backdate claims for expenditure to 1 April 2026.

Eligible spend

Eligible expenditure will include any staffing and related on-costs for the continuation of delivery as set out in the relevant voluntary system funding agreement.

The funding available is revenue grant funding and capital expenditure is not eligible for funding.  We define capital expenditure as expenditure which will lead to the creation or improvement of an asset which has a value of more than £2,000.

All payments to be covered by the Gambling Levy Transition Fund must have taken place by no later than the end of July 2026.  A payment is defined as taking place at the moment when money passes out of Your control. This may take place when:

1. legal tender is passed to a supplier (or, for wages, to an employee)

2. a letter is posted to a supplier or employee containing a cheque; or

3. an electronic instruction is sent to a bank/building society to make a payment to a supplier or employee by direct credit or bank transfer

You must not deliberately incur liabilities for Eligible Expenditure in advance of need; nor pay for Eligible Expenditure sooner than the due date for payment.

The following costs are not Eligible Expenditure:

1. Costs incurred in delivering services to any clients, service users or beneficiary groups that were not in place in your organisational set up prior to 1 April 2026.

2. Costs for which you are already receiving funding from another source.

3. Payment that supports lobbying or activity intended to influence or attempt to influence Parliament, government or political parties, or attempting to influence the awarding or renewal of contracts and grants, or attempting to influence legislative or regulatory action.

4. Using grant funding to petition for additional funding;

5. Input VAT reclaimable by you from HMRC; 

6. Payments for activities of a political or exclusively religious nature;

7. Goods or services that you have a statutory duty to provide;

8. Payments reimbursed or to be reimbursed by other public or private sector grants;

9. Contributions in kind (i.e. a contribution in goods or services, as opposed to money);

10. The acquisition or improvement of Fixed Assets (with ‘Fixed Asset’ defined as an asset that would be capitalised under DCMS’s own capitalisation policy, as set out in DCMS’s annual accounts) by You ;

11. Depreciation, amortisation or impairment of fixed assets owned by You;

12. Interest payments (including service charge payments for finance leases); 13. Gifts to individuals;

14. Entertaining (entertaining for this purpose means anything that would be a taxable benefit to the person being entertained, according to current UK tax regulations); 15. Statutory fines, criminal fines or penalties; 

16. Liabilities incurred before the issue of this funding agreement unless agreed in writing by us;

17. Use in respect of costs reimbursed or to be reimbursed by funding from any other source; 

18. Use to purchase buildings or land;

19. Payments to cover costs not directly related to the delivery of the project you have set out in your application form;

20. Costs related to your general operational duties, such as redundancy payments.

21. Any element of profit.

Maximum value of funding 

We will provide no more funding to You than an equivalent pro rata value of three months funding of Your current voluntary system funding arrangements which you are in receipt of.  For instance, if you have received £120,000 of voluntary system funding to support 12 months of provision, we will provide no more than £30,000 to support 3 months of provision.

If you are already receiving funding towards the cost of the relevant provision from another funding source, you cannot also claim those costs from the Gambling Levy Transition Fund.

DCMS will make funding available to all eligible organisations.

For successful applicants, funding will normally be paid in arrears upon receipt of a relevant grant claim at the end of June 2026.  For organisations who are unable to claim in arrears (normally because they lack sufficient unrestricted reserves), DCMS will consider making a payment at point of need where there is relevant evidence to justify such a payment.

Application process

How to apply

Organisations wishing to make an application for support from the Gambling Levy Transition Fund should complete and submit a Gambling Levy Transition Fund Application Form and submit it by no later than 23.59 on 30 April 2026.

Applications should be submitted to gamblinglevytransitionfund@dcms.gov.uk.

Applicants should ensure that they include the following evidence as part of their application:

a. A full copy of any grant offer letter or contract for services which demonstrates that they were in receipt of funding from the industry-funded voluntary system in line with the eligibility criteria. 

b. Evidence of any application made to the Gambling Harms Prevention VCSE Grant Fund or the Gambling Harms Treatment VCSE Grant Fund (or both) and, where you are in receipt of a decision rejecting any such application, a copy of the decision notice.

c. If the organisation is not a registered charity, then a copy of relevant evidence which demonstrates they are a charitable, benevolent or philanthropic organisation.

d. Where an applicant wishes to seek payment of the grant at point of need, relevant evidence that the organisation lacks relevant unrestricted reserves to be able to claim in arrears.

Our decision making process

Upon receipt of a completed application we will carry out the following due diligence:

a. We will review the copy of the contract or the grant offer letter you have supplied to ensure it aligns with the stated eligibility criteria.

b. We will review the evidence you have provided to demonstrate that you have made an application to either the Gambling Harms Prevention VCSE Grant Fund or the Gambling Harms Treatment VCSE Grant Fund.  Where you are still awaiting a decision on receipt of funds, we will not make a final decision on whether you qualify for a grant from the Gambling Levy Transition Fund until you provide us with a copy of that letter.

c. If you are a charity, we will confirm your status by reviewing the Register of Charities.  If you are not a registered charity, we will review the information you have provided to confirm you are a charitable, philanthropic or benevolent organisation. We may make other relevant checks as necessary to confirm the status of your organisation.

d. We will check the information you have provided to us to ensure that your project will only be delivered in England.

e. Not all of the applications to this fund will qualify as a Subsidy under the Subsidy Control Act 2022.  Where an application does fall under the Subsidy Control Act 2022, we will seek to make an award using the Minimum Financial Assistance arrangements set out by the Act and have included relevant questions within the application form to allow us to do this.  If we are unable to use Minimum Financial Assistance to make an award of grant to you, we may contact you and request more information to allow DCMS to conduct a more detailed assessment of your proposal.  Please note, that it is a legal requirement that all assistance provided through UK government funding must comply with the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and we will be unable to provide assistance in the event that your proposal cannot be justified under the Act. Find more information about the Subsidy Control Act..

f. We will review your proposed breakdown of costs to ensure they meet Eligible Spend definitions (see 4 Eligible Spend above) and that the funds requested amount to no more than the Maximum Value of Funding allowed (see 5 Maximum Value of Funding above).

We will use these processes to confirm that your application meets all of the relevant eligibility criteria.

We will also carry out other relevant due diligence checks upon your application to guard against identity fraud.  

If you meet all of the relevant eligibility criteria, pass the due diligence checks as set out above, and have provided evidence that your request for funding to the Gambling Harms Prevention VCSE Grant Fund and/or the Gambling Harms Treatment VCSE Grant Fund has been rejected, then we will issue you with a Grant Offer Letter to confirm the offer of funding we are making to you.  You will need to return and sign that Grant Offer Letter in order to accept the grant offer.

If you meet all of the relevant eligibility criteria, pass the due diligence checks as set out above, and have NOT yet provided evidence that your request for funding to the Gambling Harms Prevention VCSE Grant Fund and/or the Gambling Harms Treatment VCSE Grant Fund has been rejected, then we will notify you of our intent to fund you subject to receiving confirmation that your other funding applications have been rejected.  Upon receipt of a copy of the relevant decision notice, we will then issue you with a Grant Offer Letter to confirm the offer of funding we are making to you.  You will need to return and sign that Grant Offer Letter in order to accept the grant offer.

All applications will be assessed upon receipt and we will aim to make decisions on your application as quickly as possible.

We will retain all information you provide to us for a period of at least 6 years from the end of the financial year in which the funding was awarded in order to allow us to investigate any subsequent allegations of misuse of funds.

Payment of grant

Generally DCMS makes grant payments in arrears on a quarterly basis.  To claim your grant you will therefore need to make a claim for grant funding after June 2026.  The claim will need to set out how you have spent the funds we have awarded to you and we may ask you to provide a sample of supporting evidence to demonstrate the costs you have incurred.  

We recognise that some organisations may have limited unrestricted reserves and will therefore be unable to make grant claims in arrears.  If this applies to your organisation then Section 5 of the grant application form allows you to make a claim for an advance payment of grant funding (DCMS refers to this as a payment at point of need).  We will assess the evidence you provide to us and, if we are satisfied that you are unable to make grant claims in arrears we will make arrangements to make advance payments of grant to you.  At the end of June 2026, we will require you to submit a full breakdown of how you have spent the funds and we may ask you to provide a sample of supporting evidence to demonstrate the costs you have incurred.