BAFTA will accept awards from crime winners from 2025

BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, has introduced provisions into its rules giving it the power to retrospectively strip winners of its competition awards of their trophies if they are convicted of a crime that could result in a prison sentence or “proven dishonesty.” “leads,” starting with the winners in 2025.

BAFTA chairwoman Sara Putt unveiled a new “forfeiture procedure” on Wednesday based on a review, citing the case of former BBC News presenter Huw Edwards, who pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children this year to have made.

“Earlier this year we were shocked by the news of the arrest and subsequent conviction of former BBC newsreader Huw Edwards for child pornography offences,” Putt wrote in a letter to BAFTA members. “Between 2002 and 2017 he won seven individual BAFTA Cymru awards for television presenting. Following the news, extremely complex questions have been raised about historical awards given to individuals and, in particular, whether awards won in competitions should ever be subsequently removed.”

In her letter, she emphasized that “we are not the only contracting agency dealing with these complex issues.”

The review concluded that “there are exceptional reasons why an award won in competition should be reviewed and potentially revoked and that we need to provide more clarity about this to participants in our annual awards rulebooks,” Putt explained. “From 2025, a forfeiture process will be introduced into our awards framework, which will provide specific guidance on what would lead us to consider revoking a competition award. This includes entries disqualified from participation due to proven dishonesty and the very rare event that a winner is convicted of a serious offense resulting in a prison sentence.”

The BAFTA chairman also stressed: “We recognize that our honorary awards, such as our Fellowships, Special Awards and Outstanding Contribution Awards, may be revoked because they are instituted by the Academy – meaning they are not in competition be “won”. ”

BAFTA “thought very carefully about whether we could now seek to apply these criteria retroactively,” Putt noted, “but agreed that it would be impossible to do this properly.” So we will look forward and apply this criterion to everyone competition awards awarded from 2025 onwards.”

Putt concluded: “No solution is perfect and there may be cases where the results of this review will be tested in the future. We will therefore review these principles and processes together with our other procurement rules every year.”