Despite 'Cuts' Pledge, BBC Payroll Continues to Rise

[Teddy Bear]

Have you noticed the increase of quality in service and programming by the BBC?
Thought not.
Yet despite the pledges to cut jobs and reduce expenditures, they only seem to grow. They also justify spending £650K on headhunters to fill whatever posts they think they need to have.

The BBC somehow have the gall to still claim 'it is still on track to make savings of £850million by 2017 and that the rise in staff can be partly attributed to one-off projects'.

How is it 'on track' when it is increasing staff members, not reducing it?
The usual BBC BS!.

Way past time they should be privatised, then we'll see REAL cuts.

BBC payroll grows despite cuts pledges …and the corporation blows £650k on headhunters

• Official figures have revealed that 22,039 people work at the corporation
• That's an increase of 310 since last year
• In 2011, then DG Mark Thompson said 2,000 jobs would be axed by 2017
• However, corporation is recruiting faster than it is reducing

By Sam Creighton

The number of people employed by the BBC has risen despite repeated promises to cut staffing levels.

Official figures have revealed that 22,039 people work at the corporation, an increase of 310 since last year.

It has also emerged that headhunters were paid more than £650,000 in 2013 to fill posts across the organisation.

Yesterday critics branded the staffing rise ‘astonishing’ and the use of headhunters ‘ludicrous’.

While the official employment figures – taken as a snapshot a month ago – include employees on permanent, fixed-term and flexible contracts, they do not include casual staff, so the true figure could be even higher.

In October 2011, then director-general Mark Thompson said 2,000 jobs would be cut by 2017 as part of a push to save £700million. However, the latest figures show the BBC is hiring people faster than it is cutting back.

A spokesman for the corporation claimed yesterday it is still on track to make savings of £850million by 2017 and that the rise in staff can be partly attributed to one-off projects.

He said: ‘Occasionally staff numbers will fluctuate depending on programme schedules and other special projects, such as the Commonwealth Games, covering the Scottish referendum, further development and personalisation of iPlayer.’

But the 2014 figure of 22,039 is higher than the 22,013 employed in 2012 when the BBC had the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to cover. There was a fall to 21,729 in 2013 before the recent rise.

John O’Connell of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘At a time when all public sector organisations should be cutting back on staffing numbers, it’s astonishing the BBC’s has actually increased.
‘You’d have thought the headcount would peak during a big event like the Olympics so the continued growth is disappointing news for families feeling the pinch, hoping for cuts to the licence fee.’

The BBC has also been criticised over the amount it has spent on headhunters.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that in the calendar year 2013 the BBC spent £657,522 on ‘recruitment consultants, executive search, and headhunting firms for the hiring of BBC staff at all grades, including senior staff and members of the executive board’.

In the financial year ending March 2013 it spent £700,813. It was during this period that £150,000 was paid to recruitment consultants to find a replacement for Mr Thompson.

But then the BBC made an internal promotion, giving George Entwistle the £450,000-a-year job. He lasted just two months before quitting after a series of scandals including the Sir Jimmy Savile revelations and Newsnight’s wrongful implication of Lord McAlpine in a child abuse case.

Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Commons culture committee, said it was ‘completely ludicrous’ for BBC to spend so much on headhunters.

He added: ‘Most businesses seem to do perfectly well drawing up their own shortlists and don’t have to resort to hiring expensive headhunters.

‘It’s another example of the BBC having too much money, which is why we should have a reduced licence fee.’

A spokesman for the BBC said its main recruitment channel is its website.

He added: ‘We do however sometimes use external recruitment consultants to help ensure we obtain applications from a wide range of high-quality candidates, often for very specialised roles.

[Teddy Bear]

Any surprise that Hall's promise to reduce expenditures among the BBC elite is as empty as assurances that the BBC gives value to the licence fee payer and adhered by its charter.

As somebody at the TaxPayers Alliance said “Lord Hall promised to rein in BBC spending but it appears that his cost-cutting drive is stuck in neutral.”
In actual fact, since his expenditures have risen - it's in reverse.

BBC chiefs' expenses rise under Lord Hall
Analysis of the expense claims of top BBC managers has shown expenditure has increased during Lord Hall's first year as director-general

Lord Hall vowed to improve efficiency at the BBC when he took over last year
By Miranda Prynne,

Senior BBC managers’ expense claims increase during Lord Hall’s first year as director-general despite his promises to rein in spending.
The amount spent by broadcasting executives rose by seven per cent to about £691,000 under Lord Hall’s leadership, analysis of the claims disclosed by the corporation every three months revealed.

The BBC’s commercial director Bal Samra, who is paid £315,000 a year, spent more than £7,300 on taxis alone.
In total, senior executives spent about £66,000 entertaining TV stars and other contacts.
Sources within the BBC told The Times that the spending increase across all senior staff was nearer to three per cent, but only claims made by the highest level managers are made public.

Lord Hall vowed to improve efficiency at the BBC when he took over last year, claiming he would review all spending by the corporation, particularly excessive senior salaries and pay offs.

Speaking last year, he said: "We've got to look at the way we spend all our money - on managers, on programmes, on everything as if we were spending our own personal money.

"At a time when every single family in this country is feeling hard up, is feeling the pinch, is feeling the difficult times - we've got to be able to justify what we spend to the people who are paying for us."

The BBC began publishing the claims made by its most senior managers in 2009 when Mark Thompson was director-general.
Since then, BBC bosses have claimed £3.2 million for flights, rail tickets, car hire, business calls, meals, entertaining and more.
More than £500,000 has been spent on taxis with hundreds of journeys worth more than £50, it was claimed.

Creative director Alan Yentob, who earns £168,000-a-year, spent nearly £25,000 in taxis while Mr Samra’s cab bill came to £22,000 and Mark Linsey, the head of entertainment commissioning, had taxi fares totalling £24,000.

In the latest financial year a massive £188,000 was spent on flights, making this the biggest expenditure.
A BBC spokesman said: “There are essential costs incurred in the running of a major broadcasting organisation which will always fluctuate, but we are mindful we are spending public money and aim to drive down costs wherever possible.

“We’re saving money by reducing the number and total pay bill of senior managers.”
Andy Silvester, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Licence-fee payers will be furious that their hard-earned cash is being spent not on high-quality programming but on senior management’s astronomical expense bill.

“Lord Hall promised to rein in BBC spending but it appears that his cost-cutting drive is stuck in neutral.”

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC want to claim that spending on taxis per person in central London has more than halved.
So how do they achieve it?
Simples - they just increase their staff from 1,260 in 2012 to 4,500 in 2013, and that way the 'per person' bill for taxis has more than halved.
Never mind that the actual bill for taxis jumped from £73,000 to £116,000, this is the BBC method for achieving cuts

Did any intelligent person really believe that this moron was really going to achieve any cuts?

BBC under fire as taxi bill to ferry staff to and from Broadcasting House hits £116,000

• BBC underfire after spending on taxis for Broadcasting House staff rockets
• Broadcaster spent £116,000 on fares in 2013-14 compared to £73,000 year earlier
• Freedom of Information request reveals figure has increased by nearly 60%
• Staff in central London building grew from 1,260 in 2012 to 4,500 in 2013
• BBC says spending on taxis per person in central London has more than halved

By Nadeem Badshah

The BBC has come under fire after new figures showed spending on taxis for staff at its Broadcasting House headquarters has soared by nearly 60 per cent.

A Freedom of Information Request has shown it spent £116,000 on fares in 2013-14 - compared with £73,000 in 2012-13.

Critics say employees should turn to public transport more after the cost of transporting staff to and from the building went up by more than £40,000.

The number of staff in the central London building has grown from 1,260 in 2012 to about 4,500 employees in 2013 and the BBC say the spending per head on taxis has more than halved as a result.

But Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'This is an enormous amount of money and the big increase shows that the BBC can tighten its belt.

'Though some of these journeys would have been unavoidable, in many cases public transport must have been an alternative.

'The licence fee is too high and cutting these costs could mean they could reduce the licence fee and give hard-pressed families a break.'

Over the past two financial years, staff made around 47,000 expense claims including for taxi journeys.

It covers the period when the BBC moved employees from their old office, Broadcasting House in west London, to the new headquarters in Oxford Circus.

The figures come just days after it emerged that spending on expenses rose during Lord Hall of Birkenhead's first year as director-general in 2013, despite a cost-cutting drive.

Senior managers spent around £66,000 wining and dining TV stars and other contacts.

And expenses for the corporation's most senior executives rose by seven per cent in Lord Hall's first year to around £691,000.

The broadcaster says that the cost per head of taxi fares fell to £26 in 2013/14 compared to £58 the previous year and among senior managers, their taxi bill is down seven per cent from last year.

A BBC spokeswoman said: 'As we have closed some of our old buildings, staff numbers have more than trebled in Broadcasting House.

'These figures actually show that the amount we spend on taxis per person in central London has more than halved, delivering better value for the license fee payer.'

[Teddy Bear]

Nearly half of all jobs available at the BBC are offered to those already inside the corporation. The BBC justify this with the claim: Bosses say the policy is necessary to avoid having to make too many staff redundant during a string of re-organisations - but recruitment experts warn that they could be 'restricting the talent base' by failing to hire workers from outside.

So let's have a look at the logic of the BBC claim.
They have been stating for quite some time that they will be cutting back on staff, which begs the question first, why do they need Between January 2013 and November 2014, there were 6,766 vacancies at the BBC?

They're not telling us if they are completely new positions with ridiculous titles that we have seen created before by the BBC, or those where employees have decided to leave and left a vacancy. But with over 22,000 employees present in July last year, would nearly a third of those have left?
I don't think so.

So it's a fair assumption that many of these posts are completely new positions.
For what purpose? If the BBC are cutting down, why are they expanding?

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, and say it's wisdom of a company to go into new territory to expand their business.
So would existing employees who have no intrinsic skill in that position be the best ones to employ? Do they require training to give them even the modicum of understanding of their new position? Isn't it better to hire people who have already shown skill in that field?

Needless to say, I'm willing to bet that most if not all of the jobs that were advertised appeared only in the Guardian.

This is to make sure the BBC only hires those who will 'fit in' to their mindset.

BBC jobs only open to insiders: Half of all vacancies at the Corporation are never publicly advertised

• Only 52% of BBC job vacancies are advertised externally, new figures show
• The rest are advertised on an internal jobs website meaning that only current BBC employees can apply
• Experts warn the Corporation could be liable to claims of discrimination
• But the BBC says it has to advertise jobs internally to avoid redundancies

By Hugo Gye for MailOnline

Half of all jobs at the BBC are only open to Corporation insiders, according to newly uncovered official figures.

Thousands of vacancies at the State-funded broadcaster are never advertised publicly, meaning that only people who already work at the BBC are able to apply for them.

Bosses say the policy is necessary to avoid having to make too many staff redundant during a string of re-organisations - but recruitment experts warn that they could be 'restricting the talent base' by failing to hire workers from outside.


Insiders: This website advertises hundreds of jobs at the BBC which are only available to current employees of the Corporation

The BBC has previously faced accusations of cronyism after it emerged that senior executives had been offered jobs paying six-figure salaries which had not been advertised on the open market.

Now figures obtained by MailOnline show that across the Corporation as a whole, half of all job vacancies are advertised only on an internal BBC forum - or not at all.

Between January 2013 and November 2014, there were 6,766 vacancies at the BBC, of which only 3,498 - or 51.7 per cent - were advertised externally.

The remaining 3,268 jobs were only advertised within the BBC, according to the data which were provided by the Corporation following a Freedom of Information request.

The BBC hires outsourcing giant Capita to run its recruitment procedures, with jobs advertised via the publicly accessible BBC Jobs website as well as other media outlets such as local and national newspapers.

However, the site has an additional section which can be accessed only by users with an internal BBC log-in username and password, and contains many more job vacancies than the external sections.

Most jobs are initially advertised only in the internal section of the website, then advertised publicly if there is no suitable internal candidate, according to a BBC spokesman.

The Corporation says it has to prioritise insiders for jobs because of the hundreds of posts which have been eliminated over the past few years as a result of the licence fee being frozen by the Government since 2010.

A spokesman told MailOnline: 'As part of our drive to save £1.5billion the BBC is restructuring and cutting the number of posts we have - so when we do need to recruit priority consideration is given to internal candidates in order to save on redundancy costs.'

A union source suggested that this was nothing more than 'good HR practice' - but an employment lawyer warned that closing off job opportunities could leave the BBC liable to discrimination claims if it cannot prove that it has encouraged applications from all sectors of society.

'The biggest risk by not advertising externally is restricting the talent base,' said Philip Pepper, a partner at Midlands-based law firm Shakespeares. 'You run the risk that you're actually restricting your workforce - so you could risk a claim [for discrimination].

'Public authorities have a greater commitment to equality. They would generally offer the jobs externally as well as internally.'

However, Mr Pepper also said that organisations 'have a duty to avoid redundancy', adding that employers are less likely to face a claim from a laid-off worker if they can show that they have made a reasonable attempt to rehire him or her in a different job.

Official guidelines from the Equality and Human Rights Commission state that employers should consider advertising vacancies publicly in order to attract a diverse range of applicants.

Guidance based on the Equality Act 2010 reads: 'If an employer doesn't advertise at all or advertises in a way that won't reach people with a particular protected characteristic, this might in some situations lead to indirect discrimination, unless the employer can objectively justify their approach.

'This is because not advertising or only advertising in a very limited way may stop people with a particular protected characteristic finding out about a job, which could count as worse treatment.'

In recent months comedian Lenny Henry has led a campaign to increase diversity in the BBC and criticised managers for not giving enough ethnic minority broadcasters a chance to display their talents.

In general, opportunities for private sector workers to move into the public sector are currently extremely rare - separately to the BBC's hiring policy, the Civil Service has imposed a 'freeze on external recruitment' which means that nearly all job vacancies are filled by candidates who are already civil servants.

The BBC came under fire last year over the hiring of senior executives, many of whom apparently landed their high-profile jobs without having to apply for them.

Director general Lord Hall, who was hired in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile scandal, appointed a number of managers, including his former colleague Anne Bulford and ex-Cabinet minister James Purnell, to positions which had not been publicly advertised.

And in November, the BBC revealed to Press Gazette that several senior journalists had been hired to fill jobs which were not even advertised within the Corporation.

The organisation refuses to discuss the hiring of most of its best-known faces - such as economics editor Robert Peston and Newsnight presenter Evan Davis - because they fall under the banner of 'talent' and are therefore exempt from Freedom of Information laws.

[charmbrights]

To be completely fair to the BBC it is necessary to separate the three different arguments about recruitment.

The hiring of old friends to newly created jobs which are not advertised anywhere and which carry large salaries is to be condemned utterly.

The hiring of highly skilled specialists (be they on-screen or technologists) into real jobs via job agencies from a limited pool of people employed elsewhere (sometimes called "poaching") happens all the time in many industries. Thus a skilled web site designer from a good web site development company may be tempted to join the BBC, and God knows they need some to sort out the Topsy-like mess that is bbc.co.uk.

For all "normal" jobs every company in the world prefers to promote from within for two reasons: it provides a career path for their employees which is good for morale, and it is cheaper than hiring from outside. The odd thing about the BBC is that they pay Crapita to do their internal recruiting; do they not have a department called 'Personnel' or 'Human Resources' or whatever the current euphemism is? And yes, I do know that there is a person paid a third of a million a year apparently to head such a department.

[Teddy Bear]

Just imagine what the increases would have been if the BBC hadn't pledged to make cuts.

BBC claims to be slashing staff but last year increased payouts to top stars such as Gary Lineker and Graham Norton, boosted its total wage bill AND hired more people

• The BBC employed 18,974 people last year on an average salary of £52,000
• The corporation's bill for TV talent rose by £14million to reach £208million
• And the wages of the best-paid stars soared by 21% compared to last year
• Director-general Tony Hall vowed to defend the BBC and claimed it will raise £1billion by selling programmes abroad

By Hugo Gye for MailOnline

The BBC has hired more workers and boosted the amount it pays out in salaries despite plans to save money by cutting staff, it emerged today.

The corporation is also spending more money on retaining big names such as Gary Lineker and Graham Norton, with the bill for the highest-paid stars rising by a fifth.

But BBC bosses insisted that the broadcaster should not cut back on its operations - and vowed to raise £1billion from selling programmes abroad, in order to offset licence fee losses.

Two weeks ago, director-general Tony Hall revealed that the BBC would have to cut 1,000 jobs in order to make £50million of savings by streamlining the organisation's management.

However, the corporation's annual report released today shows that the total workforce has risen from 18,647 to 18,974.

The overall wage bill in the past year was £976.5million, up from £955million the year before, meaning that the average BBC worker is paid more than £52,000.

Actors, presenters and television personalities were paid a total of £208million, which is £14million than the BBC paid out the year before.

Nine of the on-screen 'talent' were paid more than £500,000 - but the BBC has repeatedly refused to release the names of the highest earners, claiming it would jeopardise future contract negotiations.

The corporation spend £5.1million on the salaries of those paid more than £1million - up by 21 per cent over a year - with Mr Lineker and Mr Norton believed to be part of that exclusive group.

Lord Hall is paid a total package of £466,000, with the six other executive directors - including former Blair minister James Purnell - all earning more than £300,000.

A spokesman for the BBC said that much of the increase in wages was driven by the incorporation of the World Service into the main corporation budget for the first time.

The director-general today hit back at suggestions that the BBC should scale back its 'imperial' ambitions, for example by axing entertainment shows such as The Voice or reducing the size of its website.

'There is an alternative view that prefers a much-diminished BBC,' Lord Hall said. 'It's a view that is often put forward by people with their own narrow commercial interests or ideological preconceptions.'

He insisted that audiences did not want 'a significantly smaller BBC' and the public's voice 'will matter most in this debate', vowing to protect the universal licence fee and maintain independence from politicians.

Lord Hall said: 'I have real difficulty with the idea of artificial restrictions on creativity - after all, the last time politicians tried to be creative we ended up with the Millennium Dome.

'So it will be hard to support any proposal that stops us finding the next Strictly, the next Bake Off or - dare I say it - the next Top Gear.'

The BBC announced a five-year plan to generate £1billion from BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, to help cope with a possible squeeze on other sources of funding.

The organisation makes money by selling British shows abroad, with Doctor Who being its biggest hit and Great British Bake Off, Top Gear and The Weakest Link also successful internationally.

Producers in France and China have launched local language versions of Top Gear, while Bake Off has migrated to Turkey and Israel.

Last week it emerged that the BBC had agreed to cover the cost of free TV licence for the over-75s, following a negotiation which Lord Hall described as 'not a good process'.