Pennies from heaven

The mad-dash-for-cash continues at the BBC, with the news of an accelerated emptying of the Media Centre on the White City site. The strategic dispersal of staff from White City was one of the decisions that Mark Thompson put in the "too difficult" box during his final year as Director General.

As BBC Worldwide employees exit for Stage VI of re-developed Television Centre in 2015, most W12 remaining Future Media and Technology staff get biffed to Salford Quays, creating space in the Broadcast Centre for television production teams.  Property and safety people head to Birmingham, archive teams get scattered round outer London, and BBC Media Action has to find its own space to rent.

The only guaranteed savings are "costs avoided" in terms of operating the Media Centre. It was built under a PFI-type deal, with a commitment to a 30-year-rental, which still has to be paid until 2034, empty or not - my rough estimate is £15m pa. The BBC will try to find a paying tenant, but has so far had no luck with the adjacent White City 1, vacant since March 2013.

The big prize would be to clear the whole White City site, raising bigger cash from the freehold, which is buried, when last seen by the NAO, in something called the Insight Property Partnership. TV production staff have put that back, by fighting to stay in the capital, when there's much more space in Salford and Glasgow. And piling more technology people into Broadcasting House is a bad move for that building's reputation with already disaffected staff.