Evan Davis told by the BBC to stop his Happy Heat Pump podcast

Evan Davis, a BBC radio presenter, has been asked by the BBC to stop hosting The Happy Heat Pump Podcast.

He’d started doing this podcast (on Buzzsprout) in December.

Davis’s cohost on the podcast is Bean Beanland, the curiously-named Director for Growth and External Affairs for the Heat Pump Federation, a lobby group. The UK government has recently required new-build homes in the UK should fit technology like heat pumps; though other technology options are available.

A BBC spokesperson told the Daily Mail that “The BBC editorial guidelines are clear that anyone working for the BBC who does an external public speaking or writing engagement should not compromise the impartiality or integrity of the BBC or its content, or suggest that any part of the BBC endorses a third-party organisation, product, service or campaign.”

Given that it’s co-hosted by an employee of a lobby group and discussing something mandated by government policy, it is unlikely to be a balanced podcast given that it promotes the use of one particular technology. It also criticises government policy. As one example, in episode 15, Beanland criticises government investment in the gas industry, without much pushback from Davis; and in the final “farewell” episode, Beanland again criticises governments for not explaining the need for a transition.

Davis says, in his last episode:

Essentially, I’m a BBC employee and they very kindly signed off me doing this side hustle non-BBC but as the series has gone on - in fact as the world has progressed over the last few months - they have become concerned that anything like this, trying to inform people about heat pumps, can be interpreted rightly or wrongly as somehow treading on areas of public controversy.

I take their shilling, they dictate the rules, they know they have to try and keep their presenters out of areas of public controversy, and they have decided heat pumps can be controversial so they’ve asked me not to be involved so the Happy Heat Pump podcast does come to an end. They said it was a difficult decision: they’re very unkeen to stop me doing things that that I find rewarding - and we can keep all the episodes up the 20 episodes up - but they they want us to stop.

What’s interesting about that decision, that there is perhaps a sense that heat pumps are an issue that has somehow found itself being seen, rightly or wrongly, as controversial.

It’s also unlikely that Davis did this for the money.

Davis earns around £290,000 (US $390,000) from the BBC to present a flagship news show, PM, on BBC Radio 4; and earns an additional, undisclosed, amount to host a BBC television show Dragon’s Den (the UK equivalent of Shark Tank).

It’s also reported that he paid a small amount for recording equipment for this show.