Guido’s old enough to remember when Tim Davie claimed “even more” transparency was vital to improving public trust in the BBC, and promised change. Unfortunately, it turns out nobody in the corporation was actually listening. According to new data from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the BBC’s average response time to FoI requests has increased from 11 to 16 days since 2019, with the number of responses within the 20 working day statutory deadline also falling by 4% in the same period. The longest response period has more than doubled, from 86 working days in 2019 to a whopping 215 working days in 2021…

Likewise, the number of requests the BBC has decided are worthy of responding to – even if only partially – has dropped from 69% to 63%. The usual excuse they like to trot out is that the information requested simply falls outside the scope of the FoI, and that “the BBC is not required to supply information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output or information that supports and is closely associated with these creative activities.” In practice, that means it has no obligation to tell the public how much their ludicrous rebrand cost, or how much the taxpayer coughed up for a ten-part audio series and a TV documentary on Shamima Begum…

At the time of going to pixel, Tim Davie is currently in front of the Public Accounts Committee to talk about the BBC’s value for money. Worth bearing in mind…