The Great British Bake Off to air on C4 in 2017

Speaking at a Realscreen event in Washington, C4’s chief creative officer said: “I can confirm that Bake Off will be back on C4 this year.”

C4 has come to an agreement with the BBC to waive a hold-back clause which could had prevented the Love Productions format from airing on a rival channel within 12 months of its BBC swansong.

Love has already moved into pre-production on the C4 series. Broadcast understands the indie was confident there was no strong legal case for the hold-back clause to be enforced, and believed the BBC had largely used it as a negotiating tactic.

Casting for the first C4 series is now closed.

Hunt said she “made no apology” for the audacious £75m, three-year bid for the baking contest in September and was “delighted we’ve got it”.

“We are the plucky underdog,” she added. “I’ve spent my entire career working with Love on shows that have gotten us in a lot of trouble. [Chief executive Richard McKerrow] could have gone anywhere - he had the biggest show on TV - but he came to us”. 

A BBC spokeswoman said: ““The BBC will not use its hold back clause against C4 and Love Productions in relation to Bake Off and its associated shows. We wish the programme well for the future and look forward to seeing who is cast on the show.

“The BBC is proud of the part it has played in growing and nurturing the programme - doing that is at the core of what the BBC does. We have many exciting projects for the future. Watch this space.”

A corporation insider added: “We don’t want to get in the way of them reinventing the programme. In this instance we believe it would be undignified to have one public service broadcaster in a potential dispute with another and the associated costs for each party would ultimately come out of programming budgets. We don’t believe in driving up costs in the public sector”.