Recommendation 14

To address these challenges, the BBC escalated issues directly with Capita’s CEO and co-located supply-chain technologists to improve coordination. The BBC told us it switched to payment by milestone part- way through the programme, after delays had already occurred, and acknowledged that it should have adopted this approach from the outset. When we asked about wider adoption of milestone-based payments, the BBC agreed that it had learned a lesson but had not applied this learning to other contracts. The BBC told us that Capita was not incentivised to increase sales and reduce evasion. It said that it tied Capita’s performance to customer-service SLAs and closely tracked customer satisfaction.26 25 Q 27 26 Qq 27-29 10 2 Growing commercial returns Investment and returns in commercial activities