This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Dozens of local councils have urged the chancellor not to delay planned cuts to the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals.

Philip Hammond is due to reveal when the cut will be implemented when he presents his budget on Monday, days after the Guardian revealed that a draft version of the document envisages no change until October 2019.

In a letter to Hammond, the leaders of 27 councils urged him to take urgent action to address the “human misery” caused by the machines, by moving as quickly as possible to limit the highest possible bet on FOBTs from £100 every 20 seconds to £2.

“As local authorities, we sadly know first-hand the devastating impact these addictive machines have had on our residents and high streets, clustering in deprived areas, fuelling problem gambling and indebtedness, and creating real misery to people’s lives,” they said.

The letter said the cut should happen as soon as possible to “reduce the cost of problem gambling to the public purse and, most importantly, ensure that vulnerable people are protected”.

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Bookies lobbied vigorously against the change, claiming that the decision would result in thousands of job losses at high street stores that cannot turn a profit without FOBTs. But the council leaders pointed to a study from the Institute of Public Policy Research that suggested the positive impact of any jobs that FOBTs support, or taxes they provide to the Treasury, were wiped out by their negative effects, costing the economy £1.16bn a year.

The lead signatory of the letter is Rokhsana Fiaz, the mayor of Newham, a London borough that has one of the highest concentrations of FOBTs in the country.

Bookmakers have told the government that they need up to a year to prepare for the impact on their business, starting from the date the government lays a statutory instrument, which will not happen until after the budget. If the chancellor agrees, that would mean that bookies could be allowed to keep their FOBTs until autumn next year.

A Whitehall source told the Guardian last week that the implementation date to be announced in the budget would be in October next year.

Campaigners and a cross-party group of MPs say the industry should have started preparing for the change when the decision was announced in May, meaning implementation should happen a year on from then, at the end of April 2019.

If bookmakers are granted a reprieve until next October, the extra six months would hand them a £900m windfall, based on the £1.8bn they collected from the machines last year.

The Treasury declined to comment on the content of the budget.