English Super Casino Plans Cancelled

Brown, who has not been a gambling advocate, instructed officials to reconsider the idea .

Plans for a supercasino along the lines of Las Vegas resorts in Manchester, England, have been scrapped by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Brown, who has not been a gambling advocate, instructed officials to reconsider the idea shortly after assuming the Prime Minister's office this past June.

The Manchester location was to be the first not restricted by casino laws only allowing a handful of slots and table games at any given location. Instead, the supercasino would have had 1250 slot machines, numerous table games, and bars, restaurants, and conference facilities. The Gambling Act of 2005 allowed for up to 40 supercasinos, a number promptly reduced to 8, and then to one.

Brown has shown to be a foe of gambling expansion. Before becoming Tony Blair's successor as Prime Minister, one of Brown's final acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to tax gambling revenues at a 50% rate, a move that caused several online casinos to reconsider plans to locate in the United Kingdom; embarassingly, this included an online site owned by the British government.

Blair had backed plans for supercasinos in both Manchester and Blackpool, but Manchester won out. Now that Brown is preventing the Manchester project, he says he will examine other ways to revitalize the city. Manchester city council members had no immediate comment, but in the past they have said they are committed to the casino, and that any change of plans may force them to go to court.

The report of the Casino Advisory Panel, which picked Manchester over 26 other applicants because the city met all criteria for social impact, regeneration, benefits, and willingness to have a license, did not sway Brown.

At the current time, the sixteen regional casinos created by the Gambling Act, eight with a 150-slot limit and eight with a 40-slot limit, are still planned; but already government officials have tried unsuccessfully to ask if any of the host towns have had "a change of heart."