BPI Appoints Beth Sidwell as Director of Policy and Public Affairs
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the trade body that represents record companies in the UK, has appointed Beth Sidwell as its Director of Policy and Public Affairs. The appointment was announced on Monday 19 October 2026, and she has taken up the role with immediate effect.
Sidwell is not new to the organisation. She joined the BPI in August 2021 and has been its Head of Policy and Public Affairs since June 2023. In the new post she reports to chief executive Dr Jo Twist OBE and leads the team that handles the industry's dealings with government and Parliament.
The BPI said the appointment followed an extensive external recruitment process. The search started in July, when the organisation advertised for a Director of Public Affairs. That role was to sit on the Senior Leadership Team and report to the chief executive.
Before joining the BPI, Sidwell was a senior leader at Connect, a public affairs and communications agency based in Westminster. She also spent close to four years working in Parliament for Conservative MP Helen Grant.
Public affairs was part of the remit of Sophie Jones, who had been the BPI's Chief Strategy Officer. Jones has left the BPI to become chief executive of the Royal Television Society. The RTS announced her appointment in April, succeeding Theresa Wise. Jones had joined the BPI in 2020 as Director of Public Affairs.
Sidwell also leads the BPI's work on BRIT North, a specialist creative college planned for Bradford, West Yorkshire, with an opening targeted for 2028. The Department for Education approved the bid in August 2023, when the project was still called BRIT School North. A college of this kind would train young people for careers in music and other creative fields.
The BPI's policy page names Sidwell as its Head of Policy and Public Affairs and includes her overview of the organisation's latest work on copyright and artificial intelligence. Copyright decides who controls and gets paid for a song, and AI is raising new questions about both.
Policy work can sound far from the recording studio or the record shop. Its decisions still reach both, and the new director now carries that brief.
