Editor Alison

Congratulations to Alison Holt, anointed BBC Social Affairs Editor (from Social Affairs Correspondent). 

We think Polly Toynbee was the first to hold this title, lured from The Guardian in 1988 by John Birt, as part of his changes at BBC News. She sat alongside John Simpson, Foreign Affairs and Peter Jay, Economics. She left for the Independent in 1995.  Polly was a Birt fan, and even tried to organise a letter of support in 1993, when it was discovered that Birt's BBC earnings were channelled through a private company. 

Alison (BA English, Sussex; journalism post-grad at Cardiff) started out with Ocean Sound, broadcasting from Fareham in the mid-eighties, already specialising in stories on the social affairs beat. She reported for the regional BBC programme First Sight, before joining BBC2's Public Eye in 1994. She won the 2015 Royal Television Society's Specialist Journalist of the Year award; the judges said she consistently delivered stories which were "agenda-setting, policy shifting and politically important - while treating people at the heart of the stories with patience, knowledge and understanding."