Michael Fish’s dismissal of the approaching Great Storm in 1987 and the forecast for a barbecue summer before a washout in 2009 are among the Met Office’s most embarrassing moments, but another thing they did not see coming was the end of their 93-year contract with the BBC.
Britain’s national weather forecaster said today that it was “massively disappointed” the BBC had ended its association with the Met Office, which has lost out as part of an open tender process to provide weather services to the corporation.
Negotiations will now begin over the future of 19 BBC weather forecasters, most of whom are employed by the Met Office, to see whether they will remain with the Met Office or work for whichever firm wins the new contract from autumn next year.
Metra, an offshoot of the New Zealand-based MetService, which already provides the BBC’s weather graphics, confirmed today that it is vying for the contract for a second time, after losing out to the Met Office in 2010 when the contract was first opened up to competition.
The Met Office won that five-year contract despite concerns over its accuracy after failing to predict heavy rain for the summer of 2007, which was the wettest since 1766, and for predicting a “barbecue summer” for 2009, which saw 42 days of rain.
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Another company linked with the contract is MeteoGroup, a company founded in the Netherlands and owned by the Press Association until it was sold to an American private equity firm in 2013. It still has its headquarters in London.
The Met Office has provided forecasts for the BBC since the first radio bulletin on November 14, 1922.
Laura Young, a Met Office spokeswoman, said: “We are massively disappointed. It has been a long time and together with the BBC we’ve worked to form the landscape of weather forecasting to the public.”
The BBC’s contract with the Met Office is reportedly worth around £3 million, about a tenth of the £32.5 million the Met Office receives from commercial bodies and around 1.4 per cent of their revenues of £220.8 million last year.
The Met Office is owned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills but is a trading fund, so has a degree of commercial freedom.
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Ms Young said: “The BBC contract only makes up a very small proportion of what we do. We provide a huge number of services and our biggest contracts are for things like aviation, we do ITV and there is our public weather service.”
She added that the Met Office is not anticipating redundancies and said that projects like the new £97 million weather supercomputer would be unaffected.
A BBC spokesman said: “Our viewers get the highest standard of weather service and that won’t change. We are legally required to go through an open tender process and take forward the strongest bids to make sure we secure both the best possible service and value for money for the licence fee payer.”
Bill Giles, who led the Met Office’s team at the BBC, from 1983 to 2000, told the Sunday Times: “It’s a hell of a shame. It’s the end of an era.”
The BBC will still broadcast the Met Office’s severe weather warnings.
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Ben Bradshaw, the former culture secretary who used to work for the BBC, tweeted: “‘Extremely alarmed by rumours BBC to drop UK Met Office in favour of foreign weather forecaster. Vital 90 year old strategic relationship... Outrageous!”
Steve Noyes, a Met Office director, dismissed concerns over the Met Office’s accuracy and said: “Ranked No 1 in the world for forecast accuracy, people trust our forecasts and warnings.”
The Met Office confirmed that the company that wins the BBC contract could technically buy in forecasts from the Met Office and broadcast them under their own name.