BBC chairman Richard Sharp resigns – what next? 

Richard Sharp has resigned as BBC chairman following a report into the circumstances of his appointment after claims that he had helped to facilitate a £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson while he was in 10 Downing Street. The report – by Adam Heppinstall KC – found that he had breached the code on public appointments by failing to declare his connection to the loan, which his acquaintance Sam Blyth (a distant cousin of Johnson’s) guaranteed for the former prime minister. 

Announcing his resignation this morning, Sharp said that he accepted he had breached the ‘governance code’. However, he goes on to note that this ‘does not necessarily invalidate an appointment’, adding: ‘I have always maintained the breach was inadvertent and not material, which the facts he lays out substantiate.’ On that note, Heppinstall found that Sharp’s role regarding the alleged arrangement of the loan was ‘very limited’ but that his failure to mention it to the interview panel risked a ‘perception’ that he had been appointed as a result of his assistance.