Extracts from the 2014 National Audit Office report entitled 'Managing the BBC's Estate'.
In 2001, the BBC signed a 25-year lease on Mailbox in Birmingham and moved into the site in 2004. The site contained 20% more desks than the BBC had said it needed in its original business case. Four years later, the BBC proposed to relocate staff from Birmingham to Salford and Bristol. Successive staff relocations and cuts resulted in much of the site becoming surplus to requirements. In March 2014, the site had been over 40% empty for the previous 2 years. Subletting this vacant space was not viable because of local market conditions. Surplus capacity made it the second most expensive site per person to run, after Broadcasting House.
In January 2012, the BBC approved spend of £4.6 million in redundancy, relocation and related costs
for relocating staff from Birmingham to Bristol and in February 2014 estimated the relocation costs of moving more staff back into Birmingham at around £8.6 million.
for relocating staff from Birmingham to Bristol and in February 2014 estimated the relocation costs of moving more staff back into Birmingham at around £8.6 million.
The BBC: "not good with money"
ReplyDelete(certainly not good from a property management point of view, with squillions squandered over the past thirty years).
I'm old enough to remember the twists and turns of the White City Stadium site instigated by Birt. What it was going to be, what it never became, and how much the Beeb spent buying itself out of an agreement so that it could issue a bond to fund the WC development by that means.
The property strategy - if there was one - adopted by Chris Kane was nothing short of tragic. As noted above, exactly how much the BBC lost through his lack of comprehension of what constitutes a building suitable for broadcasting will almost certainly never be revealed.
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