MeteoGroup gets BBC Weather contract from 2017

Are you sure about that?

If they're doing the same job but their employer changes, as is the case here, then TUPE is applicable. I know of other cases where a contract has been lost or withdrawn from a company and either gone to another or brought in-house... and the staff involved in that contract have been TUPE'd over. In fact the BBC is involved in at least 2 similar processes at the moment

As far as I know the Met Office is staying in business, they've just lost a contract. Those who work specifically on that contract should be eligible for TUPE, either to the new company or title BBC as their roles aren't redundant

If the Met Office was just a supplier to the BBC - like the company that supplies the stationary - then TUPE doesn't apply. Because there are Met Office staff working at and purely for the BBC it's different

I think you may be wrong, in that the Met Office supplies the same services to other contractors, so their directly employed staff could theoretically be redeployed internally.

I don't think this legal situation is any different to an agency providing services to a company which cancels its contract and moves to another provider, where TUPE would not apply.

However, all that said, the BBC has stated that they would allow such staff to transfer to direct BBC employment - which presumably has been agreed with the Met Office, as such action would otherwise be venturing into other legal areas about 'poaching staff' - known as the Restraint of Trade.

They could, but they can also be Tuped. The Met Office won't necessarily have roles for them but their current roles can't be made redundant because they are continuing. Therefore they must be offered the chance to be TUPEd over


That does apply as it's a 'Service provision change'

This is when:
*a service provided in-house (eg cleaning, workplace catering) is awarded to a contractor

*a contract ends and is given to a new contractor

*a contract ends and the work is transferred in-house by the former customer
https://www.gov.uk/transfers-takeovers/overview

I've been in this exact position. It's actually fairly simple - in terms of the law. If you work for a company that is contracted to provide a service and it loses the contract, the new service provider is legally obliged to hire you in the same role, providing you can prove that you worked EXCLUSIVELY for that service at least 75% of the time. In other words, Met Office employees who are working pretty much constantly on the BBC contract will be safe. Those who were working on other areas as well will be at risk. In my situation I had a tip-off that this was going to happen and was advised to keep a log of exactly what I was doing to ensure that I could clearly demonstrate that I worked almost exclusively for the service we were contracted to. Graphics people, web people, etc will have little chance of being able to use TUPE as they almost definitely will be working on the Met Office website and other sub-contracts. Of course, the other factor to consider with TUPE is that the new providers often don't want to take on the staff so simply negotiate handsome pay-offs.

Did TUPE apply to ITV franchises in the way it does to railway franchises? The staff of GNER are still working for Virgin East Coast via a series of TUPE arrangements, was GMTV required to take on TV-am staff under TUPE? I guess it's more likely that everyone at TV-am was on a fixed term contract and the renewal of these was carefully managed.

My understanding is that the graphic design team involved in the current Met Office provided BBC Weather operation, along with any producers, are employed directly by the BBC.

Forecasting and presentation, data provision and team management, has been the area the Met Office provides staff and handles (though these days I don't believe all on-screen weather presenters are contracted directly to the Met Office, though many are Met Office staff)

I'd also expect TUPE to come into play for some roles as discussed above.

In the case of a broadcasting license it's not applicable as it's not a contract to another company. It's just the loss of business, the same as if a food producer lost a supply contract to a supermarket


In the days where it was a franchise to the IBA then yes I'd have thought there was a case for the staff to be transferred, though the forerunner of TUPE only came into law in 1981. AIUI in franchise changes before then the IBA did make sure that the new companies took on staff from the old (which caused some issues in London when they were split between Thames and LWT). I'm not sure what happened in the only case that an IBA radio station lost its franchise - Radio Victory

Didn't TVam outsource news provision to Sky News towards the end of their franchise, I'd assumed (possibly wrongly) that this was to allow them to wind down the in house news operation?

I think it was a bit of both - saving money on an expensive operations by outsourcing it, and reducing redundancy costs... as well as helping out their news staff.

Of course some of the TV-AM news people who moved over to Sky are still there now, wasn't Kay Burley one of them?

Kay Burley has been at Sky News since day one, alongside Adam Boulton who also joined from TV-am. They were already there when they started doing TV-am News.

Thanks. Another I thought was one of them was Geoff Meade, but I see he left Sky in 2010

Not forgetting Mark Longhurst, also of TV-AM fame.