(28 July 2007 3:00 pm)

MUMBAI: The BBC Trust in the UK has started its first service review of the BBC's online service, bbc.co.uk.

Under the terms of the BBC's charter and agreement, the Trust is responsible for issuing service licences for the BBC's UK public services. These service licences include the remit of the service, the key requirements necessary to meet the remit and ensure the BBC's public purposes are delivered, and headline budget. The Trust must carry out a full review of each BBC service which has a service licence at least once every five years and consult publicly.

In the course of the review, the Trust will look at bbc.co.uk's role, how it is contributing to the BBC's public purposes, the distinctiveness of the service and the way it should respond to changes in user expectations and the web environment.

BBC trustee Patricia Hodgson said, "The Trust must ensure that the BBC provides distinctive, high quality services to everyone in the UK. bbc.co.uk supports the BBC remit with a large website, covering a wide range of subjects including news, sport, weather, learning, entertainment, children’s and lifestyle.

"This review will consider bbc.co.uk's performance against the terms of its service licence and will assess whether the licence needs to be developed or changed in any way."

The review of bbc.co.uk will include a three-month consultation period and the Trust hopes to gain responses from a wide range of licence fee payers and stakeholders. The Trust will draw on existing data on bbc.co.uk and may also commission new audience and market research. The BBC Executive will be invited to make a submission to the review. The consultation responses and the executive's submission will be published at an interim stage in the review.

The Trust's review of bbc.co.uk will be published early next year.