Â鶹Éç

Launching the final conclusions of the Strategy Review, Â鶹Éç Trust Chairman Sir Michael Lyons stressed that the Â鶹Éç remains a public service and as such it needs to distinguish itself from the rest of the market and hold the trust of licence fee payers.

The new strategy will guide the Â鶹Éç and the Trust as it carries out a review of efficiencies and the range and scope of the corporation's services in the light of a new settlement which sees the licence fee frozen at its current level until 2016/17. The review will incorporate the reassessment of the Â鶹Éç's television portfolio that had been intended to take place around switchover in 2012/13.

The strategy concludes that the established mission to "inform, educate and entertain" remains valid today, but that to deliver it the Â鶹Éç needs to accelerate the pace of change in its culture and behaviour, focussing on four priority areas:

1. Increasing the distinctiveness and quality of its programmes and services
2. Improving the value for money it provides to licence fee payers
3. Setting new standards of openness and transparency
4. Doing more to serve all audiences.

Sir Michael Lyons said:

"People pay their licence fee for great programmes and services. They also want to know they are getting value for money.

"This is a strategy to ensure licence fee payers get just that from the Â鶹Éç, building on much good work that is already going on within the corporation.

"At its heart is the conclusion that as a public service the Â鶹Éç needs to distinguish itself from the rest of the market, hold the trust of audiences and above all produce programmes and services that inspire, entertain and delight people and that are distinctively Â鶹Éç."

Sir Michael stressed that in order to provide high quality, distinctive content, the Â鶹Éç needed to continue its drive to invest in programmes, while seeking to drive down the costs of overheads and delivery.

The Strategy Review was launched in September 2009. The Executive put proposals to the Trust in March 2010 and the Trust then published its initial conclusions on those proposals in July 2010. Today's publication of the final strategy and supporting analysis marks the end of the process.

The Trust's initial conclusions focussed strongly on content and value for money. Today's final conclusions summarise the Trust's thinking on those topics and sets out further direction on transparency and access to Â鶹Éç services.

Specific points in today's report include:

Value for money

• A new financial review to identify long term savings required under the new licence fee settlement between 2013/14 and 2016/17. This will help identify both a realistic target for non-content based efficiencies and how any remaining funding gap can be met.

Openness and transparency

• Publication of an annual business plan and an annual budget which will provide greater detail on plans for each Â鶹Éç service and on how licence fee payers' money will be spent in the coming year
• Introducing a new programme of regular industry engagement in areas of greatest market sensitivity, including the Executive trailing significant new investments and actively seeking industry reactions to any initiative in these areas that is likely to be a significant change and so require Trust approval. This will complement existing licence fee payer engagement taking place through the Trust's performance assessments
• An annual report on all senior manager pay, breaking down information into detailed bands according to salary
• Publishing talent costs broken down into figures for aggregate spend in bands suggested by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, as well as indicating the numbers of individuals falling into each band. At the Trust's request, the Executive continue to examine the legal and commercial issues around the concept of identifying the individuals in the very highest bands
• The Trust actively seeking the views of industry about the Â鶹Éç's performance as part of the work that goes into its annual assessment of Â鶹Éç performance.

Quality and distinctiveness

• A more regular flow of information for the public on the quality and distinctiveness of programming, including quarterly reports on the performance of each Â鶹Éç service.

Serving all audiences

• Maintaining the reach of all Â鶹Éç services combined at more than 90 per cent of the population
• A commitment to DAB as a way of improving coverage for digital services and Nations services, including reaching levels approaching FM equivalence as soon as feasible and evaluating options for improving coverage in the Nations of the UK
• Preparing for any potential radio switchover over, including by working with the Government to assess the level of investment needed to boost the local tier of DAB
• A requirement for the Director General to publish a clear statement about how the Â鶹Éç will deliver the priorities and objectives set out in the new strategy for licence fee payers in each of the individual Nations of the UK
• Re-drawing and rationalising the policy for on-demand syndication of catch up content so that full length TV content is available on-demand in aggregate form, for example through the Â鶹Éç iPlayer, not programme by programme. The iPlayer itself must remain available across a broad range of devices and platforms.

Commenting on the forthcoming work to ensure effective implementation of the new licence fee settlement, Sir Michael added:

"In part this strategy review was launched in anticipation of a future tough licence fee settlement. We now have that settlement much earlier than we anticipated.

"Importantly we also have a strategy that sets out the guiding principles we will apply as we rise to the challenge of providing ever better services to audiences within much tighter financial constraints for the remainder of this Charter period."

Notes to editors

1. The Â鶹Éç Trust has today published the following documents:
   
   
   • The Â鶹Éçs Strategy – Putting Quality First
   • Â鶹Éç Strategy Review – supporting analysis
   • Summary of public consultation responses
   • Audience research (stage two)
   • Service budgetary oversight and cost base allocation review by BDO LLP
   • Market review by Mediatique Ltd.
   All documents can be found in the Strategy section of the Â鶹Éç Trust website. 
2. Under the new licence fee settlement announced by the Government in October, the licence fee will remain at its current level of £145.50 until 2016/17 and will be used to fund the World Service and Â鶹Éç Monitoring, and the Â鶹Éç will make a contribution to funding S4C through the extension of an existing partnership arrangement. The new settlement followed an earlier offer by the Trust to freeze the licence fee at its current level for two years, given the exceptional pressures that the current economic climate is placing on licence fee payers.