Ruth Evans Named UK Gambling Commission Chair, Five-Year Term Begins September 30

The UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) announced on September 7, 2026 that Ruth Evans has been appointed Chair of the Gambling Commission for a five-year term beginning September 30, 2026. She succeeds Charles Counsell OBE, who has led the regulator as Interim Chair since February 2025.

The appointment was made by Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy under the Gambling Act 2005, with ministers assisted by an Advisory Assessment Panel that included a senior departmental official and a Senior Independent Panel Member approved by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The process followed the Cabinet Office's Governance Code on Public Appointments.

Who Is Ruth Evans

ADVERTISEMENT

Lucky Buddha Casino

Up to 2M Gold Coins

+ 120 Free Sweepstakes Coins

Join the social gaming experience

Claim Bonus →

18+ | T&Cs Apply | Play Responsibly

Evans has no documented prior role specific to gambling regulation. Her career, spanning more than four decades according to her official biography, is built instead around consumer protection, financial-crime prevention and public-sector governance.

She currently chairs Stop Scams UK, a coalition of major banks, technology companies and telecommunications providers she founded in 2019 to combat payment fraud. In 2018 she chaired the steering group that produced a voluntary industry code for reimbursing victims of Authorised Push Payment bank-transfer fraud. She has also served as Chair of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, as the first Chair of the Bar Standards Board, for nine years as a Lay Member of the General Medical Council chairing its Standards and Ethics Committee, and as a Non-Executive Director of the Serious Fraud Office. She was recently appointed Chair of the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board.

Trade outlet SBC News has additionally reported that Evans spent four years at the Financial Conduct Authority between 2015 and 2019. That detail does not appear in DCMS's own biography of Evans and is treated here as secondary reporting pending independent confirmation. Under the Governance Code on Public Appointments, candidates must declare any significant political activity in the past five years; DCMS states Evans has not declared any.

Term and Remuneration

The role carries a salary of £85,000 a year for a time commitment of two days a week. Evans said she was "delighted to have been appointed Chair of the Gambling Commission at a time when its role in keeping gambling fair, safe and crime-free is more important than ever," adding that her career in consumer protection had shown her "the best outcomes are achieved through effective collaboration between regulators, industry and the technology sector."

The Counsell Transition

Counsell has served as Interim Chair since February 2025, following Marcus Boyle's departure from the role in January 2025. Nandy thanked Counsell in the announcement, calling him "a passionate and diligent Chair." Counsell in turn welcomed Evans, saying her "regulatory and consumer experience will be invaluable to the Board as we continue our work to make gambling safer, fairer and crime-free," and noting she joins "at an important time for the gambling sector and the Commission."

No source reviewed for this story states what role, if any, Counsell will take after September 30. Separately, the Gambling Commission's own corporate news archive dates the Boyle-to-interim-Chair handover to November-December 2024, a small discrepancy against DCMS's "since February 2025" phrasing; this article uses DCMS's own wording as the citable figure.

What Evans Inherits

DCMS's announcement frames the appointment around the Commission's continuing work to "complete our part in the implementation of the Gambling Act Review," and Counsell's remarks reference the Commission "as we develop a new strategy." The announcement also cites the Commission's "world leading work to tackle illegal gambling," though the often-cited $50 billion estimate for the UK illegal gambling market is an industry-commissioned Fincord Intelligence figure shared by the Betting and Gaming Council, not a Commission or government statistic.

Two other processes sit close to Evans's start date but are separate from her appointment. First, a roughly 25% increase to most Gambling Commission licensing fees, previously announced by DCMS following a January-March 2026 consultation, takes effect October 1, 2026 -- the day after her term begins. Second, the Commission's "call for industry proposals" on regulatory burdens, explicitly framed by the Commission as "not a consultation," closed on September 25, 2026, five days before Evans starts. The Commission has said any resulting changes to existing controls "could require consultation before they could be implemented," and no decision from that process had been announced as of this report.

Timeline

• January 2025 -- Marcus Boyle steps down as Chair of the Gambling Commission.
• February 2025 -- Charles Counsell OBE becomes Interim Chair.
• June 26, 2026 -- The Commission opens its call for industry proposals on regulatory burdens.
• June 30-July 1, 2026 -- DCMS confirms a roughly 25% increase to most Commission licensing fees, effective October 1, 2026.
• September 7, 2026 -- DCMS announces Ruth Evans's appointment as Chair, effective September 30, 2026.
• September 25, 2026 -- The regulatory-burden call for proposals closes.
• September 30, 2026 -- Ruth Evans's five-year term as Chair begins.
• October 1, 2026 -- The new licensing fee increase takes effect.

Bottom Line

Evans becomes the Gambling Commission's first permanent Chair in close to two years, arriving with a consumer-protection and financial-crime background rather than gambling-sector experience. She takes over a regulator mid-way through implementing the Gambling Act Review, developing a new strategy, and absorbing the outcome of a regulatory-burden exercise that closed just days before her tenure begins.