The new levels have been widely welcomed by the industry, which has suffered extensively since the new Gaming Act was introduced in the UK, resulting in widespread redundancies. It was feared that the new stakes and prizes would be lower - for a while it seemed certain that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) would settle for 60p and £60.

Effective lobbying by the industry and trade bodies, such as BACTA appear to have convinced the government to give the industry a helping hand, although the first new stake machines will not be sold for another six months.

A DCMS spokeswoman said: "After careful consideration and representations from the industry on the difficult trading conditions they are facing, we are proposing increases to stakes and prizes for lower category gaming machines."

Quentin Stott, Managing Director of Reflex Gaming gave the following reaction, "The general feeling is "halleluiah". It's been a long time coming and we were starting to fear no announcement and a slow death for the sector. However, £1 stake will give the industry the opportunity of trialing multi-stake 5 and 10 win-line games and may lead the path to a greater number of video act C machines in the market. The higher stake could lead to simpler "casino" presentation games which have a longer site life.

"£70 itself is a much better headline figure than £35 so should (hopefully) lead to a cashbox lift. The only down side is the time between having the good news and actually being able to confidently sell new cat C games. My feeling is we are unlikely to be delivering before July."

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