This page, and those it leads to, are concerned principally with hiring and managing freelance performers, writers, production office people, technicians and others engaged to work on your programme. If you are making an in-house programme for the BBC or an ITV company, the questions dealt with in these pages will be, as far as the BBCâs or the companyâs staff working for you are concerned, largely a matter dealt with by the appropriate in-house manager. Nevertheless, you may find some of the information in these pages valuable, particularly if your programme required you to contract performers, writers or other freelances.

Though there has been a great deal of legislation (and repeal and amendment of

legislation) about employment, by successive governments since the 1960s, your legal obligations as an employer are still defined, at bottom, by the Common Law of contract. If, when doing a deal with anyone (whether employed or self-employed, or even a company to which you are sub-contracting), you remember to specify a few simple points in the contract, you will at least have got the basics right.

The most important points to remember in your contracts are these:

• The nature of the work to be done by the person or company you are hiring must be clearly expressed.