Rebalancing Our Audio-visual Ecosystem: The Report of the Culture Media and Sport Committee on Independent Film and HETV Production, 2024–5

This article analyses the Culture Media and Sport (CMS) select committee's report on British Film and High-End Television (HETV), published on 10 April 2025. It argues that, given 20 years of historic failure to engage politically in support of our indigenous film culture, the report is a welcome initiative. Referencing the report and other sources, the article charts the disastrous decline of the independent sector in recent years. Accordingly, it strongly endorses the report's recommendation that the Government should increase support for all elements of the film and HETV production ecosystem, from enhancing tax relief for the distribution of low-budget films and for certain budgets in HETV, through to requiring companies investing in the UK, particularly the streamers, to increase support for culturally distinct British content. It welcomes the fact that the report signals that tax credits are not the only answers to the independent sector's problems and recognises that incentivising investment in production without support for the institutions on which the skills and talent base depend will not address the causes of the decline of the sector. The most recent of these is the escalation in production costs in studio and streamer production, whose knock-on effects are making low-budget film and drama increasingly unsustainable. The report is also highly critical of the streamers’ practice of taking all IP rights and thus depriving production companies of developing an asset base to offset subsistence costs. The report presents a highly critical account of many of the other problems facing the independent sector – such as the decreasing level of support by state organisations and the public service broadcasters, the failure to rejoin Creative Europe, and the poor performance of the BFI with regard to training. However, the article argues that one of the most significant of the report's many recommendations is that streaming platforms should be required contribute to the publicly funded infrastructures from which they benefit, through a 5 per cent levy on their UK subscriber revenue in order to support levels of domestic HETV production.