Recommendation 1

HM Government Accepted

The BBC agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. review delivery to date, including changes in aggregate to ensure the programme is still forecast to deliver its intended benefits. At this stage the BBC is confident the programme will exceed its financial and economic benefit targets. The programme has clear success and benefits measures. At the outset, these were input-based (e.g. the £700 million investment target), with output targets such as audience and economic measurement planned for development during the second phase of delivery from 2024 onwards. These are currently being measured. As a result of the £700 million of financial benefit created by the programme, Licence Fee payers have seen significant changes to programming broadcast by the BBC, all designed to better reflect and represent audiences across the UK. 60% of network television spread is already spent outside London, and by the end of the current Charter 50% of radio and music spend will be invested outside the capital. To support this creative shift, the BBC has also relocated editorial decision-making, more than doubling the number of network television commissioners based outside London from 15 to 41. The BBC is forecasting to comfortably meet the financial benefit of the ATUK programme and our goal is to drive to statistically significant reduction in the audience portrayal gap between UK regions by the end of the ATUK programme in 2027-28. The BBC is on track to exceed the target of 400 new roles outside London as part of the programme. The BBC has built significant clusters of BBC News editorial expertise across the UK, with 50% of the BBC News ‘story teams’ relocated as part of the programme. 65% of recruits for these new roles have been recruited locally. An expansion of the BBC’s editorial coverage from outside of London has also enabled the creation of new editorial clusters, increasing career development and mobility. The shift in editorial spend will generate significant regional economic benefit. It was originally forecast that the programme would create £850m of cumulative benefit by 2027-28, including significant regional impact on creative clusters. External research from PwC concluded that BBC ATUK spend is forecast to lead to 4,750 new creative businesses and 45,000 additional jobs outside London. The BBC has commissioned a range of further economic impact analyses looking at the impact of ATUK spend in building regional creative clusters which will demonstrate the impact of the BBC’s activity to local communities and stakeholders.