William Hill shop closures could put 4,500 jobs at risk

When the government slashed the maximum amount that gamblers could play in fixed-odds betting machines to two pounds earlier this year, high street bookmakers warned that jobs would go. And so they have.

Today William Hill announced the closure of 700 betting shops, putting more than four thousand jobs at risk.

It said it had seen a “significant fall” in revenue from fixed odds machines.

Critics had described the terminals as the “crack cocaine of gambling” where vulnerable people were able to lose hundreds of pounds in minutes.