Deputy PM joins fight against ‘24/7’ Blackstock Road betting shop

Deputy prime minister David Lammy has come out against plans for a 24-hour adult gaming centre on Blackstock Road, in the latest twist in a fight that has united residents on the Hackney–Islington border.

The centre is proposed by Luxury Leisure, the UK arm of Admiral Casino owner Novomatic.

Hackney Council refused the plans twice, but in April the Planning Inspectorate overturned that decision on appeal. The venue still needs a gambling licence before it can open – which residents are now battling to stop.

Lammy has represented the Hackney wards of Woodberry Down and Brownswood since July 2024, when boundary changes ahead of the general election folded them into his Tottenham constituency. The remaining wards sit within the London Borough of Haringey.

People living on Blackstock Road and in the surrounding streets of Finsbury Park have lined up against the scheme, citing fears over noise, crime and anti-social behaviour.

A resident-led campaign, Bets Off Blackstock, has sprung up to lobby MPs and the council to block the licence.

The proposed venue would take over the site of Fish & Cook, a family-run stationers that has traded for more than six decades – the company was incorporated in June 1962. 

The parade of shops runs along on the boundary of two boroughs, one of which is Islington, However, the premises sit on the Hackney side, leaving the borough’s council as the deciding authority. 

Campaigners have pointed to its proximity to Ambler Primary School, a couple of minutes’ walk away, and to the gambling outlets already packed into the immediate area.

On Friday 5 June, members of the Bets Off Blackstock campaign gathered outside Fish & Cook to protest at what they called the slot-machine centre “sneaking through” on appeal, warning of the harm it would do to crime, addiction and anti-social behaviour.

Speaking for the campaigners, Angela Brady said adult gaming centres were “sucking the lifeblood out of our communities”. 

“This planning application was refused by Hackney Council and got through on appeal despite huge local opposition,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service earlier this month. “Here in Finsbury Park we have an area of poverty and deprivation.”

“We are also on the cusp of three London boroughs [Hackney, Islington and Haringey], so a wider area needs to be considered at appeal stage. I don’t think the planning inspector fully understands our community. No one here is in favour of this casino, yet it is being thrust upon us,” she said.

Lammy, who has been MP for Tottenham since 2000, has publicly backed the campaign. 

“An adult gaming centre in this location would be hugely detrimental to Finsbury Park,” he said. “I have now promised my constituents that I will do everything I can as their member of parliament to ensure licensing is not permitted for this premises.”

“I appeal to everyone who cares about this community to get involved with the campaign, show your support, and make your thoughts known.”

Lammy and residents have stressed that the machines on offer at such venues – slots, fruit machines and the like – are the same that campaigners nationally have sought to curb.

Hackney Council had refused the application on the grounds that a round-the-clock gambling centre would bring unacceptable noise, disturbance and potential anti-social behaviour, and create an overconcentration of similar shops in the area. 

The Planning Inspectorate disagreed, finding no substantive evidence that the venue would increase gambling-related harm. More than 400 residents and around 60 local businesses had urged the agency to block the appeal.

Brady also drew attention to a £1 million penalty imposed by the Gambling Commission in 2025 on Greentube Alderney, which runs Admiral’s online casinos, over anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings. 

The campaigners say they will fight on by opposing the licensing application, but want wider action too. 

“We need a national campaign to stop these centres getting permission, causing harm and ruining our people,” she said.

Their frustration reflects a wider pattern. The Observer reported earlier this year that of 62 adult gaming centre cases decided by the Planning Inspectorate between January 2021 and July 2024, 43 were allowed on appeal.

The gambling industry generated around £16.8 billion for the UK economy in the year to March 2025, according to the Gambling Commission’s most recent annual figures. 

The same research suggests that almost half of British adults – 48 per cent – had gambled in some form in the previous four weeks, and that 1.4 million people in Britain can be classed as problem gamblers.

A separate study by the University of Essex found that gambling outlets were strongly linked to higher levels of various types of crime, even after accounting for other businesses and an area’s demographic and socio-economic profile.

Its authors concluded that such facilities should not be sited in areas with high levels of deprivation.

A Hackney Council spokesperson said the authority was aware of the inspectorate’s decision to allow the appeal and grant permission for the change of use at 3 Blackstock Road, adding that the development would have to meet in full the conditions set out in the appeal decision. 

The Planning Inspectorate declined to comment while the application remained open to challenge in the High Court. 

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government did not respond to a request for comment.

Luxury Leisure did not respond to a request for comment.

The dispute plays out against the backdrop of the industry’s scale and confidence. 

As residents lobby to keep a single gaming centre off Blackstock Road, thousands of operators, suppliers and affiliates are gathering across the capital at iGB L!VE, the iGaming trade show that opens at ExCeL London today and runs until Thursday. Organisers expect more than 15,000 attendees.

Concern over the spread of gambling on Hackney’s high streets is nothing new. 

As far back as 2010, the former London mayor Ken Livingstone came to Mare Street – which then had nine betting shops on its own – to demand that councils be given greater power to block new bookmakers. 

At the time, the borough was home to around 70 betting shops, among the highest tally of any in the capital, and the then Hackney mayor, Jules Pipe, accused the big chains of exploiting administrative loopholes to keep opening more. 

Pipe called for powers modelled on the special policy area limiting pubs and clubs in Shoreditch, so that further applications could be refused.

Four years later the council, still under Labour, joined other local authorities in pressing central government for exactly those powers, frustrated that licensing rules treated betting shops much like banks and building societies and left town halls little room to say no.

Pipe branded the industry “financial vampires”, singling out the high-stakes betting machines that could swallow thousands of pounds in minutes.

Critics at the time argued the powers councils were demanding fell short of the online betting boom that was already reshaping the industry – a tension that lingers as the borough, now under Green control, confronts a fresh application on its Finsbury Park fringe.