Petition Reduce BBFC Fees

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) charges £2.50 per minute to review all content before it can be classified, in addition to a submission fee of £20.

For foreign film and TV, the costs are doubled and tripled per submission due to subtitles and language tracks. This equates to nearly £11 per minute for a film with two languages and a subtitle track and for a 26 episode TV series it’s nearly £5000 to just to have the show reviewed.

The Irish Film Classification Office has a fixed fee of €250 per submission. In the USA, there is not a mandatory classification system. In the UK if a film isn’t classified, it can’t be sold and there’s no alternative to this. Therefore the costs are not only exorbitant but monopolised.

Can the Government please review the BBFC costs for releasing films, home video and videogames in the UK to encourage growth in the independent and foreign language creative sector, bringing the fees more inline with the rest of the developed world.