Bectu’s Big Survey
The UK’s creative industries are a global success story. But behind the curtain, workers are being pushed to the edge.
Bectu’s Big Survey 2025 is the largest-ever survey of behind-the-scenes creative workers, with over 5,500 responses across film, TV, theatre, live events, fashion, and broadcasting.
The survey highlights that the creative industries are rife with job insecurity, precarity, long hours and lack of protections for freelancers.
Bectu’s Big Survey: The results
Dig a bit deeper into what the research says about freelancers in the creative industries, the status of hiring and progression, wellbeing at work and the challenges facing screen industry workers.
A call for change
This is a pivotal moment for workers across the UK’s creative industries.
Bectu will use the evidence from this report to work with members, industry bodies and policymakers to secure meaningful improvements to pay, rights, diversity, and working conditions. We are calling for:
- Fair pay and secure work: enforce fair remuneration, end unpaid work and late payments and guarantee written contracts
- Inclusion and equal access: tackle nepotistic hiring, discrimination and harassment, improve access support, and ensure diversity initiatives deliver real change.
- Protections for freelancers: strengthen rights on health & safety, anti-harassment, shorter working hours, cancellation pay, and ensuring the new Freelance Champion has real powers for change.
- Reform tax and benefits to reflect realities: Our survey captures the reality of atypical work across the creative industries. Workers need a safety net that understands intermittence and atypical patterns of creative work.
- Career development and skills: create clear training pathways, portable development funds, and opportunities for upskilling, especially during industry slowdowns.