It’s been a difficult year for the BBC. Whether it’s Emily Maitlis or Peter Crouch, Andrew Marr or Simon McCoy, a whole host of stars have departed the Beeb as the corporation battles to remain relevant in the twentieth first-century. Budget cuts and increased competition mean that journalists with more than 1,000 years of experience have taken redundancy, retired or accepted big money deals from commercial rivals over the past two years. The mass exits have prompted fears of a ‘brain drain’ of talent with insiders expressing concerns about the difficulties of filling the smorgasbord of top posts which are currently vacant.
Now a Freedom of Information request by Mr S has revealed the cost of all these departures to the corporation’s hard-pressed coffers. Severance pay outs tripled in a year from £23.4 million in 2019/20 for 331 employees to £74.5 million for 1,106 – an average of £67,000 per person in 2020/21, the most recent year for which figures are available. The number of staff receiving payouts between £100,000 to £150,000 has more than doubled from 85 to 218 while the total of those collecting between £75,000 to £100,000 in payouts has quadrupled from 61 to 251. Redundancy policy is one month’s pay for each year of service up to a maximum of 12 months’ pay, with total compensation capped at £150,000.
The exodus comes amid a voluntary redundancy programme to slash a net total of 1,200 roles – 6 per cent of the corporation’s workforce. A BBC spokesperson told Mr S:
The BBC has made nearly £1 billion in savings over the last five years – significantly higher than our initial £800 million target – and in the last year reduced public service staff numbers by more than 1,200. We continue to prioritise spending on high quality programmes and services with over 95 per cent of our spending on content and its delivery.
Will the last staff member to leave the BBC please turn out the lights?
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