BBC defends staff bonus scheme

Ariel: 16 December 2005

The BBC has defended its salary bonus scheme following the revelation that the corporation paid out more than £15.5m to staff in the same year it began implementing job cuts.

Bonuses were paid to 10,361 BBC staff between December 2004 and November 2005, totalling £15,592,165. These do not include bonuses paid to members executive management nor the bonuses paid to staff in the commercial businesses.

The average bonus payment this year worked out at £1504 and was capped at ten percent of the total salary.

A BBC spokeswoman pointed out that the BBC had a long-standing pay policy which allowed for ‘small, discretionary bonuses to be made as part of the BBC's overall budgeted annual pay bill.'

‘Bonuses were only given at the discretion of line managers in recognition of exceptional performance, were paid to staff across the grade scale,' she said.

The system helped ensure that the BBC attracted and retained the best staff and was in line with pay policies of other media organisations.

‘While managers are always mindful of the need to take great care with licence fee money, even during a period of cost-cutting it was vital to reward members of staff who delivered high quality work.'

The bonus figure was made public following a request under the Freedom of Information Act by Broadcast magazine.

The total BBC salary bill in 2004 as published in the annual report was £1.03bn (compared with £988.4m in 2003). The public service staff salaries – not including World Service or the commercial companies – accounted for £844.4m of the total.