complaints

The BBC are now recruiting for a new head of a team dedicated to complaints and whistleblowing after the corporation has faced a string of scandals, including Huw Edwards and Gregg Wallace’s departures

The BBC is hiring a dedicated head of a whistleblowing and investigations team. The jobs currently advertised with the licence fee-payer-funded corporation come with hefty salaries of up to £120,000.

Currently, three roles are being advertised for the network: Head of Investigations (Corporate Investigations and Whistleblowing), Head of Investigations (HR), and Director of Investigations and Whistleblowing. The jobs, part of a company-wide restructure, come after the BBC faced a string of scandals in recent years.

The individual who secures any of the jobs will be responsible for assisting staff moving out of one part of the company and will form a breakout unit. On the job descriptions, it states that those who apply and are successful will play a “critical role in fostering a culture of transparency, accountability and trust.”

It adds that the successful candidate will “oversee the process and governance of whistleblowing or corporate investigations, including serious criminal behaviour, violent and sexual offences, elevated personal risk, harassment and cases posing reputational risk to BBC.”

The new roles come after former BBC News anchor Huw Edwards was suspended in 2023 and received his full salary of £435,000 per year after it emerged that he had paid a young man for explicit images. Convicted sex offender Edwards, who was spared jail in 2024, left the company in the same year. However, an anonymous whistleblower told BBC News that they believed the complaints against him hadn’t been investigated thoroughly, saying: “Things have been swept under the carpet.”

The investigation into Mr Edwards was carried out by Simon Adair, the BBC’s director of safety, security and resilience. Elsewhere, former MasterChef star Gregg Wallace was sacked by the network following an investigation into his behaviour.

45 of 83 complaints, relating to sexually inappropriate language and humour, as well as culturally insensitive or racist comments, were upheld against Wallace. He later apologised and said he “never set out to harm or humiliate” anybody.

The allegations against Mr Wallace had been spread over a 19-year period. 10 stand-alone allegations were made against other people, and two were substantiated. Those allegations, which didn’t involve Gregg, related to inappropriate language – one including swearing and the other including racist language.

Elsewhere, the BBC had apologised over “missed opportunities” to deal with allegations of “bullying and misogynistic behaviour” from former radio DJ, Tim Westwood. Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, met with the BBC’s former Director General in February last year and discussed Westwood’s alleged behaviour.

At the time, she said: “The allegations against Tim Westwood are very serious. It is essential that staff and the wider public can have confidence in the BBC as our national broadcaster.

“There have been far too many instances of appalling behaviour in the media industry, and there has been a culture of silence around inappropriate behaviour for too long. This cannot continue. In my discussion with the BBC Director General, I was clear that the BBC Board and Executive must grip the issue of workplace culture and respond at pace to the independent review they have commissioned as soon as it has concluded.”

Westwood stepped down from his show on Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra in 2013, having been at the corporation for almost two decades. Westwood, of Westminster, was charged in October last year with four counts of rape, nine counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault. The alleged incidents are believed to have taken place between 1993 and 2016. Westwood denies all allegations made against him. He previously said: “It’s all false allegations.” He is due to stand trial this month.

A BBC spokesperson said: “These roles are simply part of a wider restructure. When it comes to pay, we strike a balance to ensure we remain competitive and can attract and retain the best people, and over 95% of our spending goes on content and its delivery.”

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NEW YORK — Mayor David N. Dinkins, battered by the budget crisis and seeking to project a message of personal accountability, invited ordinary citizens to his office Monday with suggestions on how to better life in the city.

Hundreds of people started lining up before dawn with complaints and ideas–including sending a squad of cowboys and cowgirls through poverty-stricken areas to preach AIDS-awareness and anti-drug messages, offering centralized computer access to municipal information, encouraging volunteerism and sacrificing a day’s pay a year to help the city.

After being pre-screened in front of City Hall, people in line were funneled through a metal detector to chat with the heads of appropriate agencies. A far smaller group met the mayor himself.

Was it a sincere search for innovation or a folksy public relations exercise? “I’d say it was 50-50,” said Michael Attisano, who emerged from the mayor’s office after suggesting a consolidation of the city’s separate housing and transit police forces. “I think he is going to get a lot of good ideas today.”

“Even now, there are those who see this as some sort of a gimmick,” Dinkins said. “It really is a desire to convey to the people of our city that this government really cares about them.”

The mayor’s invitation for ordinary citizens to meet with him came during a major televised address on July 30 that was designed to reassure both the city and the New York State Emergency Financial Control Board, created during the great fiscal crisis of the 1970s. The review board has the power under certain circumstances to seize financial control of the city.

In his speech, the mayor laid out a mixture of money-saving ideas, including ordering the heads of all city agencies, except for the police and fire departments, to give up their chauffeurs.

The mayor announced that he would not accept a pay raise for at least a year and set aside Monday as the day when New Yorkers with concerns and innovative ideas could come to see him.

And come they did. Coreen Brown of Brooklyn, arrived before dawn with a complaint about a sewer problem. When she emerged from the mayor’s office after waiting in line for hours, she admitted that she had broken into tears and Dinkins had given her a tissue.

“I forgot everything I wanted to say. I was going to invite him to my house,” Brown said.

Others remembered to deliver their messages.

Irving Scharf, a store owner from Brooklyn, suggested among other things that the mayor set up a lending-library system of math videotapes so children who miss classes because of illness or those who need extra credit can increase their learning skills.

“I am not here to berate the mayor. I am here to encourage him,” said Thelma Williams of the Bronx, who pushed for increased volunteerism and the sacrifice of a day’s pay by New Yorkers to help the city.

Carlos Foster, a rodeo producer who also lives in the Bronx, arrived wearing cowboy garb and proposed riding into poorer areas of the city with 10 cowboys and four cowgirls to preach against substance abuse and for safe sex.

Hulan Jack Jr., the son of a former Manhattan borough president in the 1960s, suggested putting all city data in central computer depositories for quick access.

Jack said that Dinkins listened and then had a municipal computer expert deliver a 30-second capsule of what already was being done. “Then we talked another minute and a half, and that was it,” he explained after leaving the mayor’s inner office.

The Dinkins invitation to New Yorkers brought out a summer Santa Claus, complete with red suit, and a woman dressed as the Easter Bunny. Police looked on bemusedly, except when Tasia Figueroa arrived with her 11-foot python, Shorty, draped around her neck.

The mayor’s staff, after quick consultation with police, asked that the snake be parked with Figueroa’s fiance while she went into City Hall to voice her municipal license complaint.