Deal or no deal

BBC redundancy payments totalled £277m over the past seven years, according to figures released to The Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.  The spend was not even - there were surges in 2006/7 and 2011/12, with payouts in each of those years hitting over £60m.  This happens when the management convinces staff that the deal is about to change. So watch the next 12 months, with the redundancy payout cap due to halve from a maximum of two years' salary to one, in September, and Zarin Patel and Lucy Adams trying to front-load the DQF cuts.

Perhaps more alarming to, say, the National Audit Office, is that over the seven years in question, 5,992 staff were made "redundant", i.e. their role and the requirement for it ceased to exist. However, as far as I can seen Auntie's total headcount fell by around 1,500 over the same period. Which seems to suggest 4,500 "new roles" were created over the same seven years...

The top three payouts over the period were £949k (Mark Byford), then £600k and £435k. Can we work them out ?

• Wednesday update: The BBC tells The Mail the the drop in headcount from 2005 to date is 3,369 - which would imply 2623 "new roles" have been created - iPlayer and Persian are mentioned.