A legal dispute over The Great British Bake Off has escalated, with Sky formally accusing Letty Kavanagh, the former managing director of producer Love Productions, of falsifying company accounts and misusing a corporate credit card for personal expenses, including a private boat charter. Kavanagh, who is suing Sky for wrongful dismissal and unpaid severance in both the High Court and an employment tribunal, has strongly denied the claims and accused the broadcaster of running a "smear campaign" against her. The row lays bare deep tensions between Love Productions and its parent company Sky over control of one of Britain's most successful unscripted television formats.

Kavanagh, who claims she is owed £755,752 in severance, alleges Sky had a conflict of interest in attempting to poach Bake Off from Channel 4 and accuses it of inaccurate financial reporting and sex discrimination. Sky's 34-page High Court defence counters that Kavanagh instructed Love Productions to "double-count" production costs between June and September 2025, artificially inflating costs and understating profits, and that an internal review found this amounted to gross misconduct. A source close to Kavanagh disputes this, blaming accounting chaos imposed by Sky since 2023, while Sky separately alleges she used a company card for personal items such as taxi fares, postage and a boat trip — which her camp says was an assistant's card error that Kavanagh offered to repay immediately.