Recommendation 13

The BBC’s initial lack of planning resulted in unrealistic timelines for some areas of the programme, such as moving roles and local recruitment. It took three months for it to catch up and meet its target for transferring overall expenditure outside London, achieving its target by the end of June 2023.22 We therefore asked the BBC how confident it was that it would meet its targets for the remainder of the programme. The BBC repeatedly told us that it was confident of hitting its targets for Across the UK, in particular its overall target of transferring an additional £700 million of expenditure outside London between 2021 and 2028.23 The BBC explained that it was confident because delivery of its transfer expenditure target was in its gift and it had enough time to achieve this. It also explained that, since meeting its phase one target to transfer overall expenditure, it had continued to accelerate its delivery against this. The NAO found that the BBC planned to over-deliver against its transfer of television production outside London, and had identified £90 million of additional television production expenditure which it would transfer by March 2028. The BBC had yet to include this additional £90 million in its forecasts.24