Exit strategies

How long does it take to look through 22 BBC personal files ? The BBC says longer than two and half days.

Q: How many compromise (settlement) agreements did the BBC sign off between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016 ? In how many of cases had the employee been accused of sexual harassment, bullying, fraud or other crimes or misconduct ?

A: Between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016 the BBC entered into 22 settlement agreements with individuals. We are unable to provide information in relation to how many of these agreements involved an employee being accused of ‘sexual harassment, bullying, fraud or other crimes or misconduct’ as the Employment Law Department does not keep a central database containing this settlement agreement data. In order to provide this information, we would need to manually check the background documentation for the Employment Law Department’s files for each of the 22 settlement agreements and we anticipate that this would take more than two and a half days to complete.

A BBC spokesman said: “As with other businesses, the BBC uses settlement agreements where appropriate to record the terms of a settlement between the employer and employee such as for protecting intellectual property – these do not include gagging clauses. The BBC went further than most of the public sector when we capped payments at £150,000 in 2013.”