BBC Trust

The Trust’s service review of BBC Online and Red Button, published 20 May 2013, has concluded that the service licences for these services should be merged, subject to the outcome of a consultation.

The Trust is inviting responses to this consultation from stakeholder organisations, industry bodies and other interested parties, including members of the public.

The Trust is required by the BBC Charter and Agreement to issue a service licence for each of the BBC’s UK public services. The role of service licences is to define the scope of a service having regard to the needs of licence fee payers and others who may be affected.

The Trust is responsible for determining which activities need a service licence and how they should be covered, taking certain considerations set out in the Agreement into account.

The Trust is now suggesting that the service licences for BBC Online and Red Button should be merged. It is required by the Agreement to consult publicly before issuing a service licence.

We have issued a draft merged service licence (PDF file, 143KB).

The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on two matters:

1. The principle of merging the service licences for BBC Online and Red Button.
2. Whether the draft licence appears to offer sufficient certainty about the scope of the BBC’s Online and Red Button activities. In responding on this point, we recommend that you refer to the current commitments for these services which are stated in separate service licences.

The Trust has recently consulted on the performance of these services and their compliance with their current service licences. Responses to that consultation have been published here. We are not consulting on these matters again at this point.

You may respond to this consultation online or by post. Please either email your comments to [email protected] or post your reply to:

BBC Online Red Button service licence,

BBC Trust,

180 Great Portland Street,

London

W1W 5QZ.

Audio and Braille versions of the draft merged service licence and consultation documents are available upon request by contacting the BBC Trust by email or by post as above, or by calling us on 0800 0680 116 or Textphone: 0800 0153 350.

The public consultation will close on 13 August 2013.

The BBC Trust usually publishes organisational responses in full when we reach our conclusions. If you would prefer that all or part of your response is treated as confidential, please clearly indicate this at the start of your response and state which parts should remain confidential.

Responses from members of the public are not published and any personal details are kept strictly confidential.