I spoke to a lady in the Didsbury call centre: From tomorrow £35 change/canx fee coming in for Golds which is supposed to prevent last minute cancellations to preserve Avios seats.

There's a pre-prepared script they have saying that Virgin charge £31, Air France £48 and Lufthansa something or over and therefore BA is bringing themselves in line with them... That sounds like a terrible PR message.

Emails are being prepared to go out tomorrow which means 0 days notice. Seems incredible.