The Economic Impact of the UK Film Industry - BFI - British Film ...

2. Executive Summary
Economic Contribution of the UK Film Industry
The core UK film industry has become a substantial industry…
… directly employing 33,500 workers…
July 2007
• The support provided through tax incentives to encourage investment in films in the UK, first
established in 1992, has facilitated the development of a substantial UK film industry making
a large net contribution both to the UK economy and to the cultural life of the country.
• Taking into account all of the ways in which the core UK film industry contributes to UK plc,
we calculate that it contributed over £4.3 billion to GDP in 2006 and over £1.1 billion to the
Exchequer in tax revenues (gross of tax relief and other fiscal support).
• The Film Tax Relief is vital to sustaining the competitiveness of film production in the UK.
Without the Film Tax Relief, we estimate that film production would be 75% smaller, at a cost
of around £1.3 billion of lost GDP a year and about £350 million lower Exchequer revenues.
• The core UK film industry directly employed around 33,500 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in 2006
(including those self-employed). It means that the core UK film industry is of similar size to, for
example, the book publishing industry and larger than the IT hardware consultancy sector.
• While around three-quarters of the jobs in the core UK film industry are based in London and the
South East, there are significant numbers of employees throughout the UK. For example, the industry
directly supports around 1,800 jobs in the South West and 1,600 jobs in the North West, and supports
well over 3,000 in each of these two regions overall taking into account multiplier impacts.
… including some of the UK’s most highly qualified and internationally mobile workers
• The film industry provides jobs for some of the UK’s most highly qualified workers. For example, 59%
of the production workforce are university educated, while 23% of the production workforce have a
graduate level qualification specifically relevant to the core UK film industry. Furthermore, boosting
and updating skills in the core UK film industry is a key priority of the UK Film Council through its ‘A
Bigger Future’ skills strategy. The core UK film industry also attracts many highly skilled foreign
workers to the UK. The Skillset survey suggests that around a tenth of UK-based production staff are
non-British.
• The skills of the core UK film industry’s workforce are reflected in their average earnings. For
example, the average gross income for workers in the UK production sector was £31,700 per annum
in 2006, a third higher than the UK average income. The occupations which earn the highest wages
are in editing/post-production/visual effects, production/script and development, and sound/electrical,
although it should be acknowledged that low-paid and low-skilled workers are also common,
particularly in the exhibition sector.
• The skills of those working in the core UK film industry are highly valued around the world. There is a
clear danger that, if there were not a successful UK film industry, many of the most highly skilled
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