Sarah Fox joins Gambling Commission to lead policy and research
The DCMS secondment covers the brief Tim Miller leaves in September, at a regulator whose two most senior posts are still filled on an interim basis.
Britain’s gambling regulator has spent 2026 filling senior posts on a temporary basis while it works through the final stages of the Gambling Act Review. The Gambling Commission said on 29 July 2026 that Sarah Fox will join its executive team on secondment from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
What Fox will oversee
Fox will lead the Commission’s policy and research and statistics functions, together with its regulation of the National Lottery. That is broadly the brief held by Tim Miller, executive director of policy and research, who confirmed in June that he will leave in September 2026 after 10 years. The Commission said at the time that arrangements to cover his responsibilities would be set out in due course.
The move is a secondment rather than a permanent appointment. The Commission has not said how long it will run, when Fox starts, or what her job title will be.
Four years on the white paper
Fox has led the gambling and lotteries team at DCMS for the past four years. Her team covered the gambling white paper and its implementation, the transition to the fourth National Lottery licence, and policy oversight of areas including society lotteries and horse racing.
She has more than 23 years in the Civil Service, with operational, strategic, and policy roles at the Home Office, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and DCMS. She is also DCMS’s senior champion on disability, working with the staff network to improve the department’s disability confidence.
A top table still being rebuilt
Fox joins a regulator with two of its most senior posts in interim hands.
Sarah Gardner has been acting chief executive since Andrew Rhodes left on 30 April 2026, and Charles Counsell has been interim chair since 1 February 2025. DCMS opened a public-appointments campaign for a five-year chair in January 2026, applications closed on 1 May, and interviews were expected to conclude by mid-July. Neither post had been filled permanently at the time of publication.
Gardner said Fox’s existing work across the gambling and lotteries sector would be valuable as the Commission completes white paper implementation, assesses the effects of those changes, and continues to protect National Lottery players and returns to good causes.
Fox said she had seen the Commission’s work at first hand over the past four years.
‘The opportunity to cross over to the Commission and help the team continue making gambling safer, fairer and crime free is one I am really excited to take.’
The appointment brings someone from the department that produced the white paper into the regulator delivering it, at a point when the Commission’s own leadership is still unsettled.
The post Sarah Fox joins Gambling Commission to lead policy and research appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.