Grim outlook for Met Office as boss is sacked

The Met Office has been plunged into crisis after its chief executive was sacked over problems with “governance and management controls” at the £170million-a-year public body.

Rob Varley was ordered to resign from his £160,000 post by the most senior civil servant at the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which oversees the national weather service.

Mr Varley, who had worked at the Met Office for 34 years, agreed to step aside. It comes at a pivotal time for the Met Office, which lost the contract to provide forecasting services for the BBC to rival Meteogroup. The Met Office has provided data for the BBC’S weather forecasts since the corporation’s first radio weather bulletin in November 1922.

An internal report by Sir John Beddington, the Met Office’s chairman and the Government’s former chief scientific adviser, raised concerns over the “governance arrangements and management controls” within the chief ex- ecutive’s department, said a BEIS spokesman. The findings were then passed to Alex Chisholm, the permanent secretary at BEIS, who requested that Mr Varley resign.

The Government refused to say exactly what the problem was but insisted it concerned management around the chief executive’s office, and said the problem was “not on a huge scale”.

Current deputy chief executive and chief finance officer Nick Jobling has taken over with immediate effect.