£100k's Bonuses to BBC Execs Despite Ban

[Teddy Bear]

The only thing worse than the BBC maintaining its own agenda, in complete disregard to its mandate, is when the issues that the BBC spends so much effort to malign, can be seen to be going on in its own hypocritical organisation.

The BBC blames most of the evils of this country on the bankers and the bonuses they awards themselves. Yet despite the pledge to stop awarding themselves fat bonuses, BBC execs can be seen to be doing the same.

They even try to justify it by saying "Likewise the small number of contractual bonuses that have been awarded have been agreed as a cost effective way of ensuring individuals deliver on stretching performance targets whilst keeping their basic pay as low as possible.”

At a time when nearly everybody have been hit by the cuts and increase in costs, the way the BBC should seeing as a 'cost effective way of enduring individuals deliver, especially those on a fat salary - as these are, is by sacking them if they don't deliver.

As for 'Human resources director of vision, north and nations', you'd think it's a title that could only come from Orwell's 1984, yet it's really one at the BBC.

BBC executives handed £275,000 bonuses despite ban
Four senior BBC executives have been paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses despite a pledge by the director-general to scrap the payouts, it was reported today.

The managers shared around £275,000 in top-up payments last year, with one, Chris Kane, receiving £155,000 in addition to his £206,000 salary, according to the Daily Mail.
Mr Kane, head of corporate real estate at the BBC, has overseen the property development of its new Salford base.

Chief technology officer John Linwood received a bonus of £70,000 last year, making his total pay £358,000 - a total which included a pay rise of £40,000.
On Demand general manager Daniel Danker, who is responsible for the "strategy and delivery" of the iPlayer catch-up service and Red Button interactive services, was awarded £40,000, taking his total pay package to £213,000.

Human resources director of vision, north and nations Claire Dyer received an additional payment of £11,000.

In 2009, BBC director-general Mark Thompson said: "It is not appropriate to award an increase in pay or award a bonus this year." The pledge was then extended until August last year - within which time the four managers' bonuses were paid.

Mathew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, told the Daily Mail: "It's disgraceful BBC bosses have gone back on their promise to end bonuses,"
Sources at the BBC said it had been contractually obliged to pay most of the bonuses. The BBC pointed out that since 2009 it had cut the pay bill of bosses by £21 million.

A spokesman said Mr Kane had been involved in the Salford move and the redevelopment of Broadcasting House, described as "two of the most significant logistical projects the BBC has ever undertaken both of which have been delievered on time and on budget".

Last week it emerged that expenses claims for BBC bosses had risen by 20% in a year, largely because of the move to Salford.

A BBC spokesperson said: “Since the BBC agreed to a freeze on annual pay rises for senior managers in 2009 it has delivered more than £21m of savings to the pay bill for this group exceeding the targets set.

"Within this overall reduction there have been a small number of retention payments made to key talent where replacing them externally would come at a substantially higher price.

[Teddy Bear]

This article in today's Daily Mail shows just how bogus are the excuses used by the BBC to justify paying these bonuses, as well as a few other things. It demonstrates the lack of respect by the BBC for anything other than their own interests.

Huge bonuses, grotesque expenses and spendthrift bosses- so much for austerity at the BBC

By Stephen Glover

At the beginning of 2009, Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, announced an end to bonuses and a pay freeze for senior employees. After years of executives living high on the hog, it looked as though he had finally got the message.

Last May, the incoming chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, said he would ensure that senior managers did not receive bonuses or perks. He had rightly described management pay at the Corporation as a ‘toxic issue’.

How, then, can we make sense of the revelation that last year the BBC paid bonuses amounting to £275,000 to four senior managers? One of them — Chris Kane, head of corporate real estate at the BBC — received a top-up of £155,000 in addition to his salary of £206,000.

The Corporation justifies this apparent ignoring of its rules by saying that Mr Kane and two other executives were entitled to bonuses under contracts entered into before Mr Thompson’s edict. If this is true, one wonders why the BBC did not insist on renegotiating contracts in keeping with the new mood of austerity.

No defence, however feeble, can be mounted in the case of a fourth senior executive, programmes general manager Daniel Danker, as he was recruited in 2010 when the bonus ban was already in force. Nonetheless, he pocketed a £40,000 bonus last year, taking his pay package to almost £213,000.

And one of three other executives to whom I have already alluded — John Linwood, chief technology officer — received a pay rise of £40,000 last year as part of a total package of almost £358,000. This increase was plainly at odds with Mr Thompson’s stated policy, and cannot be justified by any contractual obligation on the part of the BBC.

Now it might be argued that in the context of the Corporation’s enormous budget these are relatively small figures. In fact, they are far from insignificant. Moreover, the payment of considerable bonuses, and the awarding of large pay increases, are supposedly proscribed throughout the whole of the public sector, of which the BBC, funded as it is by the licence payer, is part.

Both inside and outside the organisation such payments constitute a terrible example. The BBC is itself being subjected to severe economies as a result of the Government’s decision to freeze the licence fee for six years.

Some 2,000 employees will be laid off, and nearly every part of the BBC will be cut back, as savings of some £47 million a year are sought. Comparatively low-paid employees, of whom there are many in the Corporation, as well as those losing their jobs, will be entitled to feel both mystified and resentful at this flouting of official policy.

Alas, it does not end there. It emerged last week that expenses for senior bosses in the Corporation have soared by 20 per cent at a time of supposed belt tightening. In the three-month period from April to June 2011, the combined expenses of the 102 most senior managers rose to £183,276 from £152,257 during the equivalent period in 2010.

Most of this increase was accounted for by the costly move to the BBC’s new ‘Media City’ in Salford. Bosses spend much of their time shuttling by train between London and the North-West, and incurring hefty hotel bills.

This is not merely expensive, calling into question the assertion that relocating to Salford will ultimately lower costs. It is also an infernal waste of the time of highly-paid senior executives to have them cooped up on trains for hours on end, sipping gin and tonics and munching packets of peanuts. One of them made three return rail trips to Salford in seven days, racking up fares of £584.

Salford is a highly question-able exercise in neo-Stalinist planning for all kinds of reasons. Yesterday, the BBC’s claim that it would offer employment opportunities to people outside London was revealed as being laughably bogus. The vast majority of jobs have gone to staff moving from the capital (almost invariably against their will) and to people already working down the road at the BBC’s Manchester office.

Of the 3,172 inhabitants of Salford who applied for jobs at Media City, only 24 were successful. Eight of these are ‘meeters and greeters’ aged between 16 and 19, who will be paid a princely sum of between £3.64 and £4.92 an hour, considerably less than the minimum wage. Perhaps the BBC will now style itself as ‘Salford’s best local employer’.

All this conveys a management not fully in charge of the clattering train. As head of the organisation, Mr Thompson cannot evade responsibility. The curious thing about him is that, although he is a managerial figure par excellence, he does not appear to be a particularly effective manager.

It was Mr Thompson who presided over soaring executive salaries, and the creation of myriad new senior management posts, during the heady boom years. At the most recent count the BBC employed 110 individuals earning more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £142,500 a year, and 38 members of staff earning over £200,000.

The director-general’s own pay packet rocketed to £838,000 in 2010 before he took a cut to £675,000 — still an enormous sum of money for someone in the public sector. He will probably be required by Lord Patten and the BBC to freeze his salary for as long as he keeps his job, and he may have to submit to further reductions.

Mr Thompson threw away the old rule book, which stated that, in return for the privilege and relative security of working at a high level in the BBC, executives should accept comparatively modest salaries, and he instead instituted new rates of pay which often matched and sometimes exceeded what was available in the commercial sector.

It is perfectly true that since the party came to an end, the BBC has reduced its senior management headcount by around a quarter, although the comparative ease with which this has been achieved probably highlights the large amount of spare fat that had been built up over the years. However, we should beware. As recently as last September, Lord Patten had to kill off a new bonus scheme for bosses cooked up by Mr Thompson.

Meanwhile, recent BBC comedy programmes such as The Royal Bodyguard and The Ones have bombed with viewers. I doubt this is a direct result of budget cuts, though it is possible they have had the effect of distracting senior management.

The BBC faces an enormous challenge in carrying out cuts while maintaining standards, never mind raising them, and retaining the confidence of staff and the general public. Does it have the managerial competence? Does Mark Thompson?

Salford’s Media City looks to me a managerial cock-up on a grand scale, while those amazing bonuses handed to four senior managers, as well as rising executive expenses, suggest that the lessons of austerity have still not been properly learned.