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Under the terms of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Charter and Agreement, the Trust is responsible for issuing service licences for the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s UK public services. These service licences include the remit of the service, the key requirements necessary to meet the remit and ensure the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s public purposes are delivered, and headline budget. The Trust must carry out a full review of each ´óÏó´«Ã½ 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 ´óÏó´«Ã½'s public purposes, the distinctiveness of the service and the way it should respond to changes in user expectations and the web environment.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Trustee Patricia Hodgson said:

"The Trust must ensure that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ provides distinctive, high quality services to everyone in the UK. bbc.co.uk supports the ´óÏó´«Ã½ 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 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 ´óÏó´«Ã½ 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 in spring 2008.

Ends

Notes to editors:

The service licence for bbc.co.uk came into operation on January 1 2007. It was reissued on April 30 2007 following approval of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s on-demand proposals. It is published on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust website at www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust.

The terms of reference for the service review of bbc.co.uk are available at www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust.

The timetable for the service review is:

July 2007 Service review begins.

26 July – 14 December Public consultation and other evidence gathering.

December - January Trust publishes consultation responses and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Executive submission.

January – February 2008 Analysis, report drafting and consideration by the Trust.

Spring 2008 Final report published.

Responses to the consultation can be made online at www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust or by email to bbccouk.servicereview@bbc.co.uk. Alternatively, responses can be sent in writing to:

´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust, Room 211, 35 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4AA.

At the end of the review, the conclusions reached by the Trust may require changes to be made to the service which may require the amendment of a service licence. If these changes are significant, the Trust would have to consider the need to conduct a public value test (PVT) before implementing the change. For further information about PVTs, see www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust.

The decision to review bbc.co.uk in 2007 is in line with the Board of Governors' response to the Graf review of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s online service in 2004, when a commitment was made to review the service within three years. The Trust will decide the timetable for further service reviews once the licence fee prioritisation exercise is completed in the autumn.