Sir Peter Bazalgette, Chancellor

The Chancellor is the ceremonial head of the University and is a source of counsel to the Vice-Chancellor and the Chair of the Board of Governors. The Chancellor's role carries no remuneration or executive powers. The Vice-Chancellor is the academic leader and chief executive. The Vice-Chancellor is a full-time remunerated role.

Sir Peter Bazalgette is the Chancellor of the University of the West of England. He brings a wealth of experience to his role for the University.  Sir Peter is the former creative chief and chairman of Endemol, where he was responsible for some of the most successful and recognisable television shows of the past 25 years, including Big Brother, Ready Steady Cook, Ground Force and Changing Rooms.

In his role as the chairman of the Arts Council England, Sir Peter championed partnership and inclusion across a range of creative industries, arts and cultural organisations and universities.  He spent many years as a TV producer, devising several internationally successful formats.  He became chief creative officer of Endemol and was later President of the Royal Television Society.

More recently he spent six years as non-executive chairman of ITV, and previously served on the board of Channel 4.  His current roles include Senior Independent Director on the board of Saga, Pro-Chancellor and chair of the Council for the Royal College of Art, co-chair of the Creative Industries Council and non-executive board member for the UK Department for Education.

Last year, Sir Peter helped launch the Creative Industries Sector Vision, which sets out the shared ambition of the government and industry to support the UK’s creative industries, recognising the social and economic value of the creative industries to the UK.

Sir Peter, who was knighted in 2012 for services to broadcasting. UWE Bristol awarded Sir Peter the Honorary Doctor of Arts in 2016 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to media and the arts.

Sir Peter has also been a non-executive board member of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and currently chairs the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Book Prize Trustees.

Peter’s book about the business of TV formats, Billion Dollar Game (Time Warner), came out in 2005, and in 2017 he published The Empathy Instinct (John Murray).

Previous Chancellors:

• Sir Ian Carruthers, 2011-2024
• The Rt Hon. the Baroness Butler-Sloss GBE, 1993 - 2011