BBC staff revolt after spending cuts announced

By Urmee Khan, Digital and Media Correspondent Published: 3:09PM GMT 02 March 2010

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BBC management team have cut themselves off from being Photo: Stephen Lock

The plans to condense the BBC"s radio, air wave and website services have been billed as the greatest reorganization the corporations 88-year history.

Mr Thompson"s plans have been criticised by kinship leaders who contend the BBC should be focusing on slicing senior manager compensate rather than programmes and content.

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Union leaders will encounter Mark Thompson on Wednesday but are already notice of set upon movement to quarrel the cuts.

Gerry Morrissey, ubiquitous cabinet member of the inform workers kinship Bectu, warned up to 600 jobs could go, observant that "these cuts are all nonessential and are quite politically motivated.

"It is viewable that the BBC is being bounced by the competitors and by the domestic meridian forward of the stirring ubiquitous election," he added.

"Where is the looseness price payer in these discussions? What care is being shown to people who suffer the services right away put at risk? Where is the BBCs joining to delivering for the UKs different assembly and to reflecting in the make-up of the staff the multicultural UK?

"If, at the finish of the 3-month conference period, these same proposals are rubber-stamped by the BBC Trust, afterwards Bectu will conflict the changes, along with any mandatory redundancies that are tabled, and we will find the await of the members for industrial action.

"In the meantime, we will be lobbying tough to retreat the BBCs stance, that in the perspective usually positions the BBC as a aim for those who instruct to see the Corporation cut down and the looseness price eradicated."

The plans are piece of the corporations plan review, that has right away been submitted to the BBC Trust and a wider conference duration will take place.

Speaking to staff, Mr Thompson affianced that in the destiny 90p of each �1 of looseness price will be outlayed on programming.

In a inform to the BBC Trust patrician Putting Quality First, the house pronounced it wants to reprioritise scarcely �600 million a year to higher peculiarity content.

It wants to separate the series of sections on the website, close "lower behaving sites" and outlay twenty-five per cent less on the online charity by 2013.

The closure of teenager offerings BBC Switch and Blast! is additionally recommended.

Spend on alien programmes and drive-in theatre would be marked down by twenty per cent, capping it afterward at no some-more than 2.5p in each looseness price pound.

Spending on sports rights would be capped at 9p in each looseness price pound.

Sir Michael Lyons, authority of the BBC Trust said: "The open collect up the check for the BBC and it is right that it all the time evolves to encounter their expectations.

"This plan examination is a key piece of that process.

"We acquire the ubiquitous citation of this report, nonetheless we will wish to exam and cruise how it is delivered.

"We are pure it heads towards a some-more trained and sharply- focused BBC. That will meant a little formidable choices. But we will not cringe from those choices where they are in the interests of looseness fee-payers.

"The finish outcome should be a BBC that is honestly distinctive, honestly open and pure and honestly open service."