BBC staff are expecting further cuts to services after the government indicated that it is likely to raise the licence fee by less than expected.
Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, said on Monday that the BBC needed to be “realistic” about what people can afford as she indicated that a £15 increase in the fee, a rise of 9.4 per cent, would be “high”.
The decision has deflated staff who were already prepared for savings of £500 million a year caused by the two-year licence fee freeze. One senior staffer said gloomily: “We are struggling enough as it is.”
The agreement with the government is for the annual fee to rise in line with inflation from April but with price rises slowing, the figure is expected to be calculated using a recent measure rather than the usual 12-month average.
That decision means that the £159 a year licence fee will rise by £11 — about 7 per cent.
Frazer told Times Radio she is concerned that people will struggle with a significantly bigger bill.
“The BBC needs to be realistic about how much it can rise by,” she said. “We want to make sure we protect licence-fee payers and make sure that it rises at an amount people can afford.”
She fears that more people will follow the 400,000 households that opted against renewing their licence in the past year. “The media landscape is changing,” she said. “We’re not consuming the BBC like we used to.”
Frustrated staff highlighted that the broadcaster remains comfortably the most-used media brand given that viewing figures exceed those for Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video and Disney+ combined. They point out that their competitors have raised prices by about 30 per cent over the past two years.
The BBC executive said the decision by the government to “move the goalposts” would spell further cuts.
“The extra money will all be sucked up by inflation,” they said. “We’ve been clinging on with our fingernails for the last two years so this is a blow.”
Others warned that if the BBC is forced to continue to make cuts then its biggest properties will eventually come under threat.
“There are no easy answers and literally every option at this point involves us making less of something somebody loves,” said one.
Last week BBC News unveiled a £7.5 million cost-cutting plan, which included drastically trimming Newsnight, BBC2’s flagship investigative programme. The decision, which drew some criticism, followed the announcement that the BBC would broadcast 1,000 fewer hours of new TV programmes this year as part of a drive to save money.
The TV workers union Bectu criticised the government for using the cost of living crisis, rampant inflation, rocketing fuel bills, mortgage increases and a record postwar tax burden as a “smokescreen” for the cuts.
The union head Philippa Childs said saving households £1.25 per month would not solve their problems.
“Retreating from government promises to ensure proper funding for the BBC is not the way forward,” she said.
“This is political point-scoring at its worst. All year, following further cuts and reductions in BBC services, we have seen politicians decry the loss of local TV, radio and other services when it suits them; these are the same politicians whose government has necessitated these cuts via freezing the licence fee for two years.”
The Labour leader Keir Starmer said that he would “wait and see” how the government proceeds before calling for it to change its stance. “We’re going to have to see what the government does first,” he said.
The BBC said the six-year licence fee deal agreed in 2022 included increases in line with inflation from 2024.
“As is usual practice the government sets and confirms the cost of a licence each year and this remains unconfirmed for 2024-25,” it said. “The BBC will continue to focus on what it does best: working to deliver world-class content and providing great value for all audiences.”
