PAC hears from BBC Director-General & National Audit Office
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will hold two evidence sessions from 3pm on Monday 19 February.
Meeting details
The first session will be a brief hearing with the National Audit Office (NAO), including the Comptroller and Auditor General Gareth Davies. The PAC will be asking questions about the NAO’s budget estimate for 2024-2025.
The second session (from 4pm) will hear from senior BBC executives, including Director-General Tim Davie CBE, as the PAC looks at the BBC’s implementation of its Across the UK (ATUK) initiative.
ATUK aims to improve audience portrayal to better reflect the lives and communities of BBC audiences across the whole of the UK, by moving decisions on budgets and expenditure outside London, changing the culture of BBC commissioning, production and news.
ATUK’s overall target is to transfer at least an additional £700m of its expenditure outside London by March 2028. It had reached its phase one target of 12.5% of the total £700m expenditure by June 2023, three months later than planned. The remaining transfer of expenditure is planned for phases two and three.
The BBC has achieved many of its early targets, though an NAO report found a developed plan does not yet exist to evaluate progress with implementing ATUK and to capture its intended benefits.
Based on the NAO report, the PAC will take evidence from senior BBC officials on topics including:
- How the BBC intends to measure progress implementing ATUK;
- ATUK’s likely impact on local creative economies;
- Progress in transferring expenditure;
- Challenges for the next phases of ATUK.