Disclosures

Some 35 responses to Freedom Of Information requests suddenly appeared on the BBC site yesterday. Maybe someone was clearing the decks before a holiday. I've culled some factoids that appeal to me.

• The BBC has 13 prayer rooms.

• Deloitte currently leads the BBC league table of spend on management consultants. In 2009, they were paid £392k, out of a total spend on management consultancy of £981k. The answer is clearly specific to management consultancy - there are, presumably, other consultants at work.

• There are 645 staff at the Mailbox in Birmingham, earning pay totalling £25m - giving an average wage of £39k. This is below the average for BBC staff in England in general - at £47k. In Northern Ireland, the average pay is £44k; in Scotland £42k, and in Wales £41k. The BBC is less generous abroad - average is £29k.

• The best guess at the BBC's current headcount - those on permanent or fixed term contracts - is 20,605. 5 of them are full-time union officials.

• The in-house weekly newspaper Ariel costs £784k a year to producer, with 9.4 staff.

• Sickness absence last year cost the BBC £15.6m.

• Mark Byford flew to the Open at Birkdale and the Calcutta Cup in Edinburgh in 2008/9.

• The BBC has tv licences for 149 buildings - one way of keeping an eye on the property empire.

• I'm not sure what the news story was, but BBC Journalism spent £1.1m on flights in the month of March 2009.

• Dealing with Freedom of Information requests cost Auntie £678k in 2008/9.

To read them all yourself, click here, and then select the RSS feed.