William Hill enter staff consultations

UK bookmaker William Hill have announced that they are to close around 700 of their betting shops across the UK. This impact will lead to about 4,500 staff losing their jobs, this was blamed on the introduction of FOBT’s maximum bet being slashed from £100 down to £2.

Facing closure

William Hill have now entered a consultation period with the retail staff and have issued the following statement:

“ This follows the Government’s decision to reduce maximum bets on B2 gaming products to £2 on April 1st 2019. Since the company has seen a significant fall in gaming machine revenues, in line with the guidance given when the Government’s decision was announced in May 2018.

The decision to slash the FOBT’s will see losses for the UK and the Irish betting industries due to shop closures with a loss of up to £20m for holders of the media rights.

William Hill continued with:

“ A large number of redundancies is anticipated with 4,500 colleagues at risk. The group will look to apply voluntary redundancy and redeployment measures extensively and will be providing support to all colleagues throughout the process.”

“ Subject to the outcome of the consultation process, shop closures are likely to begin by the end of the year.”

The Association of Bookmakers (ABB) had already stated that if the legislation went ahead, significant job losses and shop closures would be on the cards.

William Hill aren’t the only ones to feel the pressure, Ladbrokes have also said that up to 1,000 of their shops could be facing closure at a cost of around £50k per shop and around 5,000 staff could lose their jobs.

Following on from news of shop closures yesterday, the Betting Shop Workers Union (BSWU) have said the news is ‘devastating’, they will be advising their members through the consultation period.