Ofcom offers to surrender powers

In July, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said that it intends to scale back the role of Ofcom by 2012, and it is understood that Ofcom has offered to surrender some of its powers.

Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive, took a 10% pay cut in July, bringing his salary to £353,541, and has informed  staff that redundancies are expected, to save costs.

Ofcom has offered to dispense some of it’s powers, including the obligation on ITV, Channel 4 and Five to submit annual statements of programme policy.

Richards said: “The new Government wants to be clear that in certain areas it is in charge of policy. As far as I’m concerned, that is absolutely fine and not problematic.

“One person’s trimming is another person’s deregulation. We’ve got a very good record in simplifying regulation or deregulating. There’s a host of areas that I will be proposing that we deregulate altogether.”

A spokesman for the DCMS said: “The broadcasting sector is currently heavily regulated and we believe that it is time to remove unnecessary regulation.

“We will remove or reduce regulation in areas where it is possible to do so in advance of a new Communications Bill, but this is a complex sector and we will need to get the interdependencies right.”