complaints

Consultation published: 27 February 2006
Consultation closed: 24 March 2006

In March 2006, the Board of Governors consulted on proposed changes to its complaints procedures.

The consultation document can be seen below.

The Governors wanted to hear a full range of views in response to the proposals in the document and would like to thank everyone who submitted a response.

All responses are available on this website. You can read the individual responses here or a summary at the bottom of the page.

The Board of Governors considered the summary of responses at its meeting in June 2006. It decided that the proposals should be implemented as follows:

•  From now on, complainants and programme makers will have an opportunity to comment on advice and other material submitted to the GPCC before a decision is reached and published.

•  The GPCC Chairman will have discretion to call hearings for first-party complaints. (First party complaints are where individuals have a complaint about unfair treatment or an infringement of privacy that directly affects them). This will only happen in exceptional circumstances, specifically where there is a dispute of fact and where the Chairman concludes that a hearing would help resolve the dispute of facts.

•  GPCC decisions will now include a new finding of "already resolved" - where GPCC believes appropriate apologies or remedial action have already been taken by Management. Findings will also be more systematic in identifying whether or not remedial action is required.

•  The new procedures are written up for the public and can be seen below.

Governors believe that the new procedures represent a real change in the openness of its procedures, and help prepare the way for the BBC Trust.

Respondents to the consultation raised a number of other issues. We respond to the main ones here:

•  Many of the respondents to the consultation were people who have been through the appeals procedure. ("Appellants"). Many of these did not believe GPCC to be independent, and suggested measures such as external members of the Committee or indeed external regulation. We understand that from an appellant's perspective, it might sometimes be hard to see BBC Governors (and Trustees going forward) as independent - particularly where appeals are not upheld. However, a key part of the debate around renewal of the BBC Charter centred around the need to protect the BBC's editorial independence by keeping an in-house model of regulation in relation to impartiality and accuracy. Ofcom - the industry wide regulator - already regulates the BBC on most other areas of content. The new Charter will not allow external members of sub-committees, so this would not be an option. However, we do believe that sharing the advice from the independent editorial adviser with appellants will help here. (See the procedures document for more detail on the independent adviser).

•  Many respondents stressed the importance of good communication throughout the process. We agree, and believe we can do better here. We will review our written communication, and use the telephone and email more where appropriate. And we will check out our summary of the complaint with the appellant. This will be done by the Governance Unit on behalf of the independent editorial adviser.

•  We agree with comments made by respondents that a target turnaround time of 16 weeks is very long. However, this is driven by the existing constraints of a monthly meeting timetable, and the new proposal to share materials for comment. Realistically, we do not think the target can be reduced, but we will keep it under review.

Many thanks once again to those who responded to the consultation - we appreciate it.

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