The Stage

BBC to axe more than 2,000 jobs

Published Tuesday 9 October 2007 at 11:15 by Matthew Hemley

The BBC is set to cut at least 12% of its workforce, amounting to more than 2,000 jobs, according to a report.

Mark Thompson, the Corporation’s director general, is to announce his plans to plug a £2 billion short fall caused by a below inflation licence fee settlement to the BBC Trust next week.

The Financial Times has claimed Thompson is looking to make cuts that amount to 6% of the BBC’s £3 billion annual budget over each of the next five years, with the number of job losses possibly as high as 2,800.

It reported that senior staff have been told factual programming will be the worst hit. Calls to close an existing service such as BBC3 instead of cutting jobs have been resisted by BBC executives, the paper said.

The news comes at a time when morale among BBC staff is low. Last week, BBC1 controller Peter Fincham resigned following the findings of an internal report into the incident that lead to misleading footage of the Queen being shown to the press.

A BBC spokeswoman said “plans for reprioritisation” would go before the BBC Trust next week and added: “We can’t comment on decisions until they have been made.”