Unimpressed

Prompted by the news that the Met Office has lost its £30m a year contract with the BBC, I wondered how big a chunk of their revenue that was.

After a bit of faffing around, I turn up an annual report for 2015-2015. See reference 1. From which I learn that the Office makes a modest profit and has annual revenue of the order of £200m of which more than 80% comes from elsewhere in government and more than half of that comes from something called the Public Weather Service. The report does not appear to contain the word BBC - so much for being a valued customer. Nor can I find any breakdown of sales by either product or customer.

Google also talks of plans to flog the office off. But if I was a potential buyer I think I would want to know a bit more about the revenue side of things than that. We might have a fancy annual report telling us lots of stuff about the pay & rations of the senior management team, the world reputation of their weather scientists and the insulation on the roof of the headquarters - but not all that much about the commercial side of the business. Not impressed.

Reference 1: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/d/b/AR1415_Revised.pdf.