And so the Beeb won’t get it’s weather forecasts from the Met Office anymore. This is because it now has to offer it’s contracts to tender to ‘secure the best value for licence payers’ which of course is great but sometimes I don’t want the best value I just want the best. Which the Met Office is.
Dutch and New Zealand companies are interested, I bet they are! Offer a cut price service that millions will watch because it’s on the BBC.
This is how the BBC will be dismantled, cut costs to the bone so the service suffers and when the quality and range of services have gone people will ask why do we need a public service broadcaster? And then it’s gone.
And the Tory MP quoted in the article can eff right off.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/23/met-office-loses-bbc-weather-forecasting-contract
paulwright says
It is what people want. I dont know why, but they voted in a government that is committed to getting rid of the BBC, and probbly the Met office too. This was a sort of cross subsidy which protected both public sector bodies. Both will now struggle so that the case can be made to privatise them both.
Time to listen to Joni’s Big Yellow Taxi again.
PaulVincent says
It’s really frustrating. However, being a public sector organisation, they’ll have been required to tender for services for many years now – it’s one of the major pains in the arse of managing any projects in the public sector (I know this pain myself, having been a project manager at a large University for several years until my recent and happy retirement!). Even worse, since this contract will be WELL over the EU threshold (which I think is still about £140k) they’ll have been obliged to go through the agony of the full EU procurement tendering process. All these processes involve openly declaring the criteria against which bids will be scored – it’s a lot more complex than simply awarding to the cheapest bid (though you may well declare that price will be a factor in evaluating bids, saying how many “points” this will be worth when totting up the bid’s total score). Having declared those criteria, you then score all the bids against those criteria, and if there’s a clear leader, the contract goes to them. If you don’t do this, then you leave yourself open to some pretty horrific punitive legal action by anyone who thinks their bid was scored higher but was not given the contract.
As you can imagine, jumping through these hoops is a MASSIVE pain in the arse, especially if you want to keep your existing service provider (which I strongly suspect the Beeb did in this case), and you can try to bias the criteria so they’ll favour your preferred provider, but in the end, if another provider beats your favourite on the scorecards, you’ve really no option but to award to the newcomer. It happened several times during my time at the University, and it’s probably the biggest headache for anyone involved in public sector procurement.
Archie Valparaiso says
Are you suggesting, Paul, that how and where public funds are spent should by decided by a less transparent process? (I’m sure you’re not, but what you have written – “frustrating”, “headache” – does read that way.)
PaulVincent says
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, … well, bearing in mind how much of public funds gets spent on just going through this interminable process, in situations where EVERYBODY knows who they’d really want to give the contract to, for perfectly good and altruistic reasons, maybe I mean “yes”. When I costed out the resources required for one such tendering process, it was horrifying – about 400 resource-hours just on our end of things, which comes to about £15,000 in staff costs to process a tender for a £150,000 contract. That’s a hell of an overhead.
paulwright says
This is my day job, so a few points – one, as above I think it is a poor decision to get rid of the Met; two, there are exemptions that might have been used for commissioning of broadcasting services (I assume the BBC’s lawyers said they did not apply); three, the point of public procurement regulations is NOT to achieve value for money – it is to ensure a fair process, which will allow strong competition, which in turn (the theory goes) will lead to value for money. You can disagree (and I do) but that is the theory.
Don’t think about the BBC and the Met Office, think of Rai 1 and one of Silvio Berlesconi’s TV companies that happens to do weather forecasts – that is the sort of insider dealing they are trying to avoid.
Archie Valparaiso says
What I don’t get is this points system referred to up there somewhere. Why don’t public-sector tender processes build in a big whack of extra points for other public entities who make bids for contracts? If that happened, and it seems logical to me – it’d be similar to the way construction firms subcontract specific jobs out to other companies in the same group – the Met Office would be a shoo-in for the BBC’s weather.
Or am I not keeping up again?
JustB says
Presumably because the private sector would cry foul and say it’s anti-competitive.
Archie Valparaiso says
But if they redistribute money between parts of their own groups. Why shouldn’t PubliCorp do the same? If the public sector is supposed to increase its efficiency by aping the private sector, why not ape it in that respect also?
Archie Valparaiso says
(Dang this no-edit thang. The first full stop should be a comma.)
JustB says
I’ve no idea. If I were feeling cynical, I’d say that when the government or a corporation talks about “competition” in this context, they mean “as long as the result is pots of money flowing from the public purse into our shareholders’ pockets”.
ianess says
I find your stance extremely bizarre. Surely everyone wants a perfectly transparent process where the contract goes to the best provider? I’m also rather astonished by your casual mentions of ‘altruistic reasons’ and ‘knowing who they’d really want to give the contract to’. This smacks of corruption, cronyism, favouritism and insider dealing. I’ve read too many copies of Private Eye to be relaxed about this type of thinking.
400 resource hours comes to £15,000? This works out at £37.50 per hour which seems rather on the high side.
As a percentage of a £150K contract, that is high. However, would these costs be much increased if the contract value was much higher?
Finally, if it is taking so much time, have you ever attempted to streamline your process or investigate how you can reduce these costs?
johnw says
My initial reaction was that we (as the people that fund the BBC) don’t seem to get very good value for money from the Met Office these days. With the Internet, use of detailed localised forecasts is far more useful and generally appears to be far more accurate – I say appears, because when I’m going to spend most of my day in one or two towns, I’ll only look up the weather for those, rather than for a whole region. If you’re a farmer or fisherman and want a forecast in order to help you run your business then surely it’s not the job of the BBC to supply that information. I’d much rather my money went to fund more creative programming and would be happy never to hear another weather forecast on the BBC.
ip33 says
I will relay that to my Mum and Mother-in-Law who don’t have internet access but watch and listen to the Weather Forecasts to help plan their days.
The BBC is for everyone.
johnw says
I’m not saying the BBC shouldn’t do forecasts but there are may many commercial alternatives so it would be a loss to very few if they stopped. Are you saying that, until everyone has access to a new medium, the BBC has a duty to continue to fund an old, possibly arcane, possibly proportionately expensive one? Is the BBC weather forecast actually any better than the forecast in a old school, and certainly very low tech, daily newspaper? We can all probably come up with our own ways to redistribute funds within the BBC. I would imagine I could find the entire weather forecast funding with a few cuts from BBC 1 programming!
ip33 says
Yes, commercial alternatives which are worse.
And yes the BBC has a duty to provide services to my Mum and Mother-in-law and they should keep doing it.
And of course the BBC weather is better than a newspaper, the Beeb is updated every 30 minutes.
JustB says
ip, on what basis are you saying the commercial alternatives are worse? Me, I’ve no idea what makes a good weather forecasting service.
The BBC is clearly important to you, but I think it’s difficult to defend it on the basis of “my BBC, right or wrong”, which I suspect you kind of do. It’s impossible to have a sensible discussion about this when people start from a tribal corner of “the BBC is PERFECT and WONDERFUL and I LOVE IT” – or its opposite.
(FWIW, I’ve gone from being very pro-Beeb to being a bit agnostic. There’s no doubting that its drama output, far from being the jewel in Britain’s crown, is now staid and predictable and pales by comparison with what Netflix and HBO are producing in the States. I personally happen to think Radio 4 is worth the licence fee by itself, but when people start from the idea that there’s some kind of moral dimension to supporting or not supporting the BBC, everyone’s onto a loser.)
ip33 says
I’m basing it on frequency of forecast (loads on Radio and TV) ease of use (clear, easy to understand maps and charts) in depth forecasting (longer forecasts than others, more local and regional forecasts) the BBC weather is the best on the market (IMO) and they seem to be pretty spot with the predictions.
JustB says
But how do you know that whoever gets the contract will be worse than the current provider?
chiz says
Maybe they could come up with some kind of open and transparent process where different providers could be measured against each other and the BBC’s requirements?
PaulVincent says
Submit an FOI request to the BBC. They’d be obliged to give you that information.
paulwright says
PaulV is not kidding. You can ask to see the bids – you might not get them, but you can ask. They are a public document.
ip33 says
Because providers on other channels are worse, so I suspect we will get a worse service.
If it ain’t broke…….
JustB says
Much better than ITV? I think ITV weather is pretty good.
ip33 says
Yes, better than ITV.
JustB says
That’s weird. ‘Cos the ITV weather is provided by the Met Office.
ip33 says
Plus sitting on the shelf in front of me the Blu-Rays of Happy Valley, Law & Order, Strange & Norrell and Wolf Hall the equal of anything of recent times.
And I love Hannibal, Breaking Bad, Fargo, Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul, walking Dead. The Beeb is just as good.
Plus of course we only tend to see the good USA stuff.
ip33 says
(replying here) But the maps aren’t as clear and easy to use, they aren’t as in depth (very rushed because they have to get to the ad break) and not as frequent.
ianess says
‘has a duty to provide services to my Mum and Mother-in law and they should keep doing it’.
Beyond parody. Reminds me of the provincial Irish newspaper which warned the Tsar – ‘the Skibbereen Eagle is keeping its eye on you’.
chiz says
Funny old world. A public funded corporation follows legal requirement to put out tenders to “secure both the best possible service and value for money for the licence fee payer” and everyone’s up in arms. You’d think it would be the opposite – that people would cry foul if the BBC awarded the contract to its mates at the existing supplier without exploring better and cheaper alternatives.
DougieJ says
Apologies but don’t have time to read all the references above but let’s cut to the chase – the OP is wrong. Everyone knows* that the present model, in a world where unimaginably high quality is provided in very large part by commercial broadcasters, is untenable.
*whether or not they admit as much is another matter.
Sorry. Is there more?
bungliemutt says
Ooh good, now we can have celebs presenting and trivialising the weather just like they do everything else.
bungliemutt says
And as if to prove the point, here’s a ‘reassuring statement’ from the Beeb: “a BBC spokesman said they didn’t anticipate significant changes to the on-air presenting team, which includes Strictly Come Dancing contestant Carol Kirkwood.”
JustB says
I was just wondering, do you think we could arrange for this thread to descend into a pointless screaming bunfight between people who carry the BBC as an inviolable part of their liberal rosary and people who think it’s a despicable and autocratic tax burden which isn’t even all that good?
That would be lovely. And timely. It’s been simply AGES.
ip33 says
Don’t read it then. And do you post sarcastic comments on every thread that you feel is beneath you?
Chris says
Yes. That thing.
Wiggy says
The issue here is not that the BBC is required to invite tenders for the best value provider. As described by others, this is the way of the world. The real question is whether the Met Office can be supported to maintain its excellence in a competitive environment.
Many of our transport and energy services are provided by successful trading arms of French, German or Dutch state owned providers.
In our short termist country we would rather give away our public sector expertise and capability (most recently the Post Office) than take the trouble to make it a competitive industry.
The Tories have clearly not learned the G4S lesson- don’t give an important job to a margin driven business. In Britain, what can be more important than the weather forecast?
davebigpicture says
We didn’t give away all of the Post Office. We kept the pension fund deficit. Some days I think Faux Geordie has a point.
On the subject of tendering: I realise procurement departments do (some) valuable work but it’s as if some companies resent anyone else making a fair profit, let alone enough to pay decent salaries or allow for reinvestment. God forbid anyone should pay a bit more to receive goods and services that can be relied on, provided by people with who you have a good working relationship.
davebigpicture says
I was listening to a radio programme about this the other day. Not the same thing as the weather contract but it’s still about the price a company is prepared to pay.
http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/13217498.Pay_battle_by_M_S_distribution_centre_workers_set_to_go_to_court/
It seems that even M&S will wash their hands of the moral obligation to treat people decently.
“A spokesman for Marks & Spencer said: “Our site is operated by our logistics partner DHL. All employees are employed either directly or indirectly by DHL.”
Nothing to do with them then and as long as they get their distribution centre run as cheaply as possible, the staff can like it or lump it. Never mind about their “code of ethics.”
I have a problem with behaviour like this, where short term profit and shareholder dividends are seen as more important than treating people decently. It can’t be justified by saying that the in store prices are lower as a result. Every price cut has to be paid for by someone and I doubt that the institutional shareholders will care as long as they don’t lose out.
Happy Harry says
I sense an ever increasing dumbing down of the BBC especially in the area of news and current affairs so presumably weather forecasting will go the same way. Every morning as I step out of the door I look at the sky and stick my finger in the air – this helps me decide whether or not I need to take my brolly. Should I submit a tender?
johnw says
Until you get yourself some MkII seaweed, you’re at the back of the queue.
dai says
I don’t live in the UK, so don’t rely on their forecast everyday, however I found the forecasts increasingly annoying.
The change to really expensive 3D graphics a few years ago seemed pointless and change just for the hell of it, especially as the result was a forecast that was much more difficult to understand.
I also disliked them telling me its going to be cold when the temperature is about 8 degrees or something on January, not sure they fuelled the national crises if there were 2 consecutive days before freezing, but I found the forecasters annoying and patronizing.
ernietothecentreoftheearth says
I have an Accuweather app on my phone. I understand it is an American company, and I have no idea where they get their data, but it is remarkably accurate. The BBC weather website is pretty good, but no better. The broadbrush forecasts on the broadcast media ( both the BBC and elsewhere) seem pretty pointless by comparison, although I appreciate some people value them.
johnw says
The other thing the BBC approaches in a necessarily broadbrush manner is traffic news. If you’re driving, you could have the TA system switched on (surely all cars with FM now has that) so that you can hear the traffic reports from BBC local radio. Whenever I’ve heard reports on Radio 2 (which is very very rare because I’m not an R2 listener) they seem to be very haphazardly chosen reports, useless to most listeners. Surely most people travelling a distance these days check the traffic on their smart phone regularly to avoid the worst of the jams in a far more measured fashion than a brief (and often cryptic) report on R2…. and why don’t 6Music listeners need similar information?
davebigpicture says
I have given up listening to BBC London for travel. They seem to take the view that certain roads are always a bit crap so why bother reporting a jam, what do you expect? (M25 from M40 – M23 usually.) Oddly enough, I often find the R2 travel of more use.
Twang says
I don’t have any problem with procuring services from the commercial sector if the quality is there and they are better value. A big if I know, but the principle is fine with me.
Jackthebiscuit says
I agree with Twang (above). My sentiments entirely.
retropath2 says
What do our international readers think when they read this perpetuo-BBC brouhaha? Seriously, box sets apart, what is US/Aussie/French/Thai telly like? Is there a PSTV station available, like the largely unwatched one stateside, which, whenever I looked seems packed to the rafters with BBC output