A confidential reporting service and a mediation and investigation offering are among the next steps in the rollout of the UK’s Creative Industr
A confidential reporting service and a mediation and investigation offering are among the next steps in the rollout of the UK’s Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA), providing additional funding is secured.
“It’s about how we can help shift the needle with regards to culture in the creative industries,” said CIISA’s chief operating officer Andrew Medlock, at the Glasgow Film Festival this week.
He detailed the next two phases for CIISA – implemented with the caveat that CIISA still needs to lock in a long-term funding plan.
“We’ve got to be funded in order to do this,” said Medlock. “It costs a bit of money, not huge amounts of money, but it costs money to do this. We’re still awaiting longer term sustainable funding, so phases two and three are TBC.”
CIISA is funded by industry. Organisations to back CIISA so far include Time’s Up UK, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. CIISA currently does not receive financial support from the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
”We are working with the DCMS about how we can secure that longer term funding,” said Medlock. ”We are keen to not become a taxpayers’ endeavour, because it’s an industry solution to an industry problem. But we are working with them, and we may ask them for money.”
CIISA implemented its first phase last week, when it outlined its four standards that offer a unified set of minimum expectations of behaviour to enable a safe and sound and inclusive working environments.
The body has been in the works since 2022 and grew out of a need to protect a largely freelance workforce in the wake of high-profile and wide-spread accusations of bullying and harassment across the inventive industries. Screen, theatre and the music sectors are the first sections of the inventive industries for whom CIISA will be applicable.
Next steps
Phase two aims to be implemented across 2025-26, with a focus on reporting, data and insights. CIISA wants to provide a confidential and safe and sound space for individuals to report workplace behaviour that falls compact of CIISA’s standards, and for those individuals to be signposted to external support services, such as the Film and TV Charity and Mentally Healthy Productions. CIISA wants to then build detailed insights of what is going on within the inventive industries, upon which guidance and training for employers can be developed, and particularly problematic areas can be called out.
“We can start to say – we’re saying a pattern here, and holding an organisation to account,” said Medlock. One way in which CIISA plans to do this is by putting organisations ’on notice’ when issues are repeatedly arising, by issuing a ’standards notice’ to a production or organisation that isn’t complying with the standards, and challenging the production or organisation to take practical steps to address these issues.
The third phase will likely be rolled out from 2026 onwards, and will offer support and intervention on behalf of individuals, starting with early dispute resolution and mediation, to offer what Medlock terms as “real-time intervention”. In some cases, where appropriate, an investigation could then be carried out by CIISA, with a culture review and set of recommendations to follow.
“We will not be investigating all concerns, that’s a really important point,” said Medlock. “A lot of people may not want to go down the route of investigation. We will only be investigating the most stern and intricate cases.
“We’re also not going to be duplicating existing HR processes, or acting as an appeals route for existing HR processes.”
Medlock also noted, “We’re applying to become what’s known [by government] as a ‘prescribed person’, which means we are legally protected by law for people to come to us with a whistleblowing concern, or a wider protected disclosure, which will provide people who may be subject to a non-disclosure agreement or confidentiality clause more legal protection to come to us.”
While CIISA will only work in the UK, the organisation is in contact with similar bodies worldwide. “We are in fantastic conversation with a number of like-minded organisations across the globe, including the Hollywood Commission.
“A lot of organisations across worldwide territories are really keen to work with CIISA, for a community of practice, with a view of exchanging ideas, developing initiatives across the world so there is a standardised approach to this. Maybe even, in due course, [there will be] international standards.”
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