ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Trust statement on the PAC report into ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ severance payments.

Date: 16.12.2013     Last updated: 23.09.2014 at 09.50

We are grateful to the PAC and NAO for the work they have done on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ severance payments. This work has helped inform the decisions we announced last week to change the working relationship between the Trust and Executive within the terms of the existing Royal Charter.

We greatly regret that licence fee payers were let down by this episode. They are entitled to expect that their money is spent wisely. Since 2009, the Trust has worked successfully with the Executive to drive down senior manager pay; and we support Tony Hall’s speedy action to impose a cap on severance payments in the future.

We have already announced measures that address the committee’s call for more rigorous scrutiny of the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™s performance and clarify the Charter’s requirement that the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Executive manages the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ while the Trust represents the Licence Fee payer. As part of implementing these measures, we will pursue the committee’s recommendation that the Trust and Executive record and communicate decisions properly so that audit concerns raised in the PAC report are addressed. In addition, the Trust’s scrutiny role will in future be much more transparent, so that Licence Fee payers themselves can judge how well the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is run.