The BBC has apologised to the family involved in the Huw Edwards scandal over the way it handled their complaint.
The BBC faced accusations it did not respond quickly enough to complaints from the family of a young person, after it took seven weeks for allegations of inappropriate behaviour to be put to Edwards.
Edwards, who was the BBC’s highest-earning newsreader, was accused of paying a teenager thousands of pounds for sexually explicit photos.
In July 2023 the BBC commissioned a review of its non-editorial complaints policies and processes.
It found there was a need for “greater consistency” in how complaints at the corporation are processed, and revealed that the initial complaint about Edwards was not logged on the relevant case management system so could not be seen by senior figures.
The report also highlighted that there was no documented process for contact and follows-ups with the complainant, so when attempts to make contact were unsuccessful, the course of action was not clear.
Commenting on the review, published today, Leigh Tavaziva, the BBC Group Chief Operating Officer said: “Although our existing processes and systems are, on the whole, working effectively, this review shows that we need to join them up better to ensure no matter how a non-editorial complaint comes into the BBC it is escalated swiftly, when needed, and dealt with by the right people.
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“Where the review identifies process improvements we accept those in full, and we are delivering on an action plan with a number of enhancements already in place.
“The report identifies specific process shortcomings in the presenter case. The initial complaint in this case was not escalated quickly enough to senior management and we have apologised to the complainant for this.”
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