After our report a few months ago about the impact of actor strikes in the US, a new article in The Guardian features interviews with former UK film industry workers, who are needing to find jobs elsewhere.
Freelancers, the majority of people working in the industry, are hard hit through a combination of Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikers, drops in ad spending and a fall in commissions from domestic broadcasters and international streamers.
The Bectu union, which surveyed almost 4,000 UK TV & film freelancers, recently found three-quarters are out of work, 35% are struggling to pay household bills.
That’s hardly a sound economic case to invest in an oversized studio on Greenbelt land, is it? It ties in with the Knight Frank report. Buckinghamshire Council’s Strategic Sites Committee should do the right thing and follow its Planning Officers recommendation: refuse the film studio application.