Deirdre Hutton, the chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, has emerged as a leading contender to be the next chair of the BBC.
Hutton, a career civil servant who has been dubbed the “Queen of quangos”, is the only female candidate to have emerged on a shortlist of about half-a-dozen names for the role leading the corporation’s new unitary board from next April.
Hutton is thought to be on the final shortlist alongside former deputy governor of the Bank of England Sir David Clementi, the author of a report published earlier this year that recommended the current BBC Trust system be scrapped and regulation of the corporation handed to Ofcom.
John Makinson, chairman of the publishing group Penguin Random House and a former managing director of the Financial Times, is also reportedly still in the running.
A final round of interviews has been taking place over the past week and Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, is expected to make a recommendation on the preferred candidate to the prime minister in the coming days.
Theresa May is likely to make her final decision in the new year.
Hutton has little media experience but has held a string of senior public roles including chair of the Food Standards Agency, head of the National Consumer Council and deputy chair of the the Financial Services Authority.
Others on the list are said to have included Roger Parry, a seasoned media executive and chair of pollsters YouGov, the Charities Commission chair, William Shawcross, and Sir David Arculus, the former boss of publisher Emap (now known as Ascential) and chair of lobbying group Energy UK.
The search for a new chairman kicked off in September after the current BBC Trust chair, Rona Fairhead, who was due to take up the role leading the new unitary board, announced she would stand down after May asked her to reapply for the role.
There was initially some difficulty attracting heavyweight candidates for the role, which pays a relatively low £100,000 a year and comes with a huge amount of public scrutiny. A string of high-profile potential candidates ruled themselves out.
Last week, Bradley told MPs she hoped that “candidates were not coming forward simply for the money”.
“This is a very prestigious role,” she said. “It is a great honour to be chair of the BBC and first chair of the unitary board. I hope that in a similar vein candidates have applied because they want to be involved in a great British institution.”
Rumours that Hutton was one of the shortlisted candidates had been circulating for about a week, but were first published by Sky News on Wednesday.
