BBC appoints assistant commissioners in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland

L-R: Helen Perry, Stephanie Fyfe, Heather Larmour and Alice Ramsey

UK pubcaster the BBC has hired three new assistant commissioners for its hubs in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Helen Perry has been named assistant commissioner for Wales, while Heather Larmour and Stephanie Fyfe have been appointed assistant commissioners for Northern Ireland and Scotland respectively.

They join Siobhan Morgan, who is acting assistant commissioner for the North of England during Alice Ramsey’s maternity leave. Ramsey joined the BBC Writersroom team from the BFI Network in Summer 2019 and was appointed as assistant commissioner last year.

The trio will have dual reporting lines to the nations commissioning editors, Ben Irving, Tommy Bulfin, Gaynor Holmes and Jo McClellan, and the head of new writing, Jessica Loveland. They will lead on new writer development across the four nations and support the existing commissioning editors for each.

Perry joins the BBC from Bad Wolf, where she was a script executive for season two of HBO/BBC drama Industry. She also worked as a development producer for BBC Writersroom Wales.

Larmour previously worked as a script editor and development executive at Kudos, while Fyfe held freelance roles as a development executive and script editor.

In addition to the assistant commissioners, Usman Mullan and Zahra Al-Sultani have been announced as BBC Writersroom’s development producers based in Salford and London respectively.

Loveland said: “Alice, Heather, Helen and Stephanie are a talented group of individuals who bring a wealth of experience and real commitment to nurturing storytellers who reflect the whole of the UK. I’m really looking forward to working with them across the new year as we work together across the nations and regions to support the next generation of bold new voices.”

In other BBC Writersroom news, the pubcaster has selected 16 finalists to take part in its one-year development scheme called The Drama Room.

The programme will see the writers meet once a month for six months and receive training and development including workshops, networking events and writing briefs with the opportunity to pitch. They will also receive the support of a script editor for a further six months to develop their original spec script.

The writers selected are Alex Riddle, Alvin Yu, Benedict Lombe, Brennig Hayden, Carlo Kureishi, Emilie Robson, Faebian Averies, Fionnuala Kennedy, Georgia Affonso, Gillian McCormack, Houmi Miura, Nathan Ellis, Paris Ventour, Rosanna Suppa, Sarah Gordon and Tim Barrow.