The New Lottery Company Limited & Anor v The Gambling Commission [2026] EWHC 891 (TCC)

The claimants challenged the Gambling Commission's award of the Fourth National Lottery Licence under the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. They ran two claims. The Process Claim alleged that the Commission was in manifest error in scoring the first claimant as a Fail against certain requirements and in failing to exclude the winning bidder for its own errors. The Modifications Claim alleged that changes to the licence amounted to a new contract that should have been re-procured.

Applying the manifest error standard by which the court reviews evaluation decisions, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith rejected the criticisms of the scoring and the case for exclusion of the winning bidder, and dismissed the Process Claim. She also rejected the argument that the modifications crossed the line into a new contract requiring a fresh procurement, and dismissed the Modifications Claim.

The judgment is a detailed application of the manifest error test to a very large public procurement, confirming how far a court will and will not go in reviewing an evaluation, and where the line falls between a permitted modification and a new contract that must be re-tendered.

The judge concluded: "The Process Claim is dismissed" and "The Modifications Claim is also dismissed".