BBC will have to cut services, chairman warns

The British Broadcasting Company will not be able to meet its bills without significant cuts, the chairman of its governing body said, as he laid out plans for the broadcaster to cope with the freezing of its licence fee for the next six years.

In addition to losing any inflation-rate increase, the BBC will also have to pay an additional £340m a year to cover the costs of services such as the World Service and the Welsh-language channel S4C that have until now been met by the public purse. Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, said in his opinion that level of saving could not be made purely from efficiency savings, a view expressed by Mark Thompson, the director-general, when the licence fee deal was announced in October.