Countryside Alliance offers solutions to the absence of independent oversight at the BBC

The Countryside Alliance has consistently campaigned for a BBC that is genuinely neutral on rural issues, and we believe at the heart of this concern is the lack of independent oversight of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines. Having seen many complaints poorly handled and having met with Ofcom to discuss the current situation, the Alliance has now written to the Culture Secretary to offer some workable solutions.

The Countryside Alliance has made many complaints to the BBC over the years, in an attempt to correct the anti-rural bias so evident in so much BBC programming. The Alliance has also assisted many members in doing the same.

Consistently these complaints run into the same obstacle- the procedures are not fit for purpose. The Government attempted to fix this problem when it established Ofcom as the BBC's external regulator last year, yet work undertaken by the Alliance has revealed that this arrangement is actually less effective than the previous model.

Prior to 2017, the BBC Trust was the final arbiter of complaints made to the BBC, and the Trust was able to look at the entirety of the Editorial Guidelines that govern the BBC's activities. Now that duty has passed to Ofcom, who are independent, but Ofcom are not allowed to rule on breaches of the Editorial Guidelines. Instead, Ofcom are limited to applying the far more lenient Broadcasting Code.

The BBC Editorial Guidelines includes rules on impartiality that govern presenters' off-air activity, summarised in a letter to the Countryside Alliance by Paul Smith, Head of Editorial Standards and Commissioning Policy, BBC Radio as: "Any BBC presenter, freelance or otherwise, needs to consider how their outside comments might impact on the work they do for the BBC".

There are no such rules in the Ofcom Code, so no one is empowered to judge whether the BBC is handling their presenters' off-air activity. The Alliance believes this is why we are seeing a seemingly random application of these rules by the BBC in which some presenters are arbitrarily and immediately censured while others are left to operate with impunity.

The Alliance recognises that this is not a time at which the Government is likely to spend energy overhauling the governance of the BBC, but this is a matter of serious import to rural communities and we will not allow it to drift until the mid-term Charter review in 2022. As such we have written to the Culture Secretary outlining some simple solutions that would instantly improve the situation.

1. Allow Ofcom to offer an opinion, rather than a judgement, on complaints that fall outside the Broadcast Code but within the Editorial Guidelines. Bizarrely Ofcom already has this power over the BBC's online content.


2. Specifically empower Ofcom to consider off-air activity when judging a complaint relating to bias, as the BBC Trust would have done.


3. Instruct Ofcom to undertake an assessment of the progress being made on the recommendations made in the 2014 BBC Trust review of "BBC coverage of Rural Areas in the UK". The Alliance has already presented Ofcom with evidence of failure to implement these recommendations.

Countryside Alliance Head of Campaigns Liam Stokes said: "When the BBC Trust was regulating the BBC, the BBC may have been marking its own homework, but at least it was marking all of it.

"Now Ofcom have taken over that role, they are unable to rule on huge swathes of the Editorial Guidelines that are vital in ensuring a neutral BBC. We know how important it is that BBC presenters do not abuse their licence fee-funded platforms to promote their own agendas, or to allow their own beliefs to colour their work for the BBC, yet there is no one checking whether the BBC is effectively policing these conflicts of interest.

"As a result, we end up with an entirely random and arbitrary application of the BBC Editorial Guidelines. In our letter to the Culture Secretary we have set out some achievable solutions to this solution, and we look forward to working with MPs from all parties to take these ideas forward."