BBC mulls departure from White City

Director general Mark Thompson may use his address to staff on Thursday to reveal plans to quit west London Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, is considering announcing that the BBC will quit its entire west London home – possibly selling it to a football club – as part of radical plans that could see more staff moved out of the capital. The corporation is also planning to concentrate out-of-London production into fewer locations, with a plan to shut down the factual department in BBC Birmingham being mooted. England’s second city was once a key BBC centre, and is home to programmes such as the BBC’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage. BBC chairman Lord Patten and Thompson are addressing corporation staff on Thursday to tell them the results of the long-awaited “Delivering Quality First” cost-cutting strategy , which will see nearly 2,000 more jobs going at the public broadcaster. The BBC’s best-known west London home, Television Centre, is up for sale and it is thought the corporation has been in talks with both Queen’s Park Rangers and Chelsea football club about the clubs moving to the site. Chelsea in particular is looking to develop a larger stadium in the west London area. Television Centre is home to what is now called the BBC’s Vision division, including TV channel controllers, commissioning executives and production departments such as drama and entertainment. The site is also home to studios used for programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, which are operated as a standalone BBC commercial subsidiary. The corporation is vacating the doughnut-shaped TV Centre by 2015, with its several thousand staff due to move to the refurbished Broadcasting House in central London or around the country to sites such as Salford. There have also been rumours, which the corporation has previously denied, that BBC drama could move to Cardiff. However, because parts of TV Centre are listed, the football clubs have expressed an interest in the BBC’s adjacent White City offices instead, which could be knocked down. The White City building – part of the overall White City office complex – is where Thompson and BBC Worldwide are based. One source said that BBC executives are deliberating whether or not to reveal the latest developments in the sale of Television Centre and possible move from White City at Thursday’s announcement. There is also spare capacity at the BBC’s new headquarters in Salford, which is the new home of children’s, sport, learning, parts of Radio 5 Live, future media and technology and BBC Breakfast. It is understood that despite the upheaval of those departments, they will not escape the DQF cuts, and that some of the vacancies created by people choosing not to move from London to Manchester will not be filled. BBC sources say that the 2,500 job losses being proposed include the 650 cuts to the World Service already announced. It is expected that the remaining redundancies will be “back-loaded”, so there will only be a few hundred during the first year or so, with the rest to come after that. About 50% of the cuts are due to come from non-programming areas, with the remaining half from programming. BBC Birmingham is expected to be scaled back, although it is understood that daytime drama Doctors and The Archers will continue to be made there. According to sources, there is a proposal that BBC Birmingham’s factual department is to be closed and its responsibilities, such as Chelsea Flower Show, moved to BBC Bristol. •

Posted by on October 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.