Clementi confirmed as BBC Board Chair
February 17, 2017
By Colin Mann
Following Privy Council approval, Sir David Clementi has been appointed as Chair to the new BBC Board for four years from February 16th 2017 to February 15th 2021. In September 2015, he was asked by the Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media & Sport to review the governance and regulatory arrangements for the BBC, reporting in March 2016.
Clementi, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, concluded there should be an end to 94 years of self-governance by scrapping the BBC Trust, recommending that the communications regulator Ofcom should handle all regulatory oversight of the broadcaster.
“Regulatory oversight should pass wholly to Ofcom, which is already the public service regulator for the UK’s broadcasting industry and has the ability to look at the BBC in the context of the market as a whole. Ofcom would be a strong regulator to match a strong BBC,” he said at the time.
Clementi also recommended that the BBC’s day-to-day operations be run by a unitary board, headed by a majority of non-executive directors. He blamed the “flawed” model of BBC governance for several failures over recent years including excessive pay and a botched IT project. He said there would be “no hiding place” for BBC failures in his proposed model and called for the role of Chairman of the BBC unitary board to be full time.
Remuneration for the role of BBC Chair is £100,000 per annum.