BBC Plans 2,000 Layoffs In Major Cost-Cutting Drive

The BBC is planning to make up to 2,000 job cuts in one of its most brutal cost-cutting efforts to date.

Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s interim director general, announced the redundancy proposals in an all-staff call on Wednesday afternoon local time.

He said between 1,800 and 2,000 roles will go, with more details to come in September, meaning staff face an anxious wait to find out where the axe will fall.

The BBC will open a voluntary redundancy scheme to avoid compulsory layoffs, Talfan Davies told staff, according to Deadline sources.

The job cuts represent roughly one in 10 members of staff across the BBC’s license fee-funded and commercial operations. The BBC had 21,508 employees last year.

The BBC also said it was implementing “immediate cost control measures” in areas including recruitment, travel and consultancy spend, and costs associated with awards and events.

In a graphic displayed during the internal call, the BBC said it would be “recruiting only for essential roles
with robust approvals,” meaning a quasi-hiring freeze is now in place.

It comes after the BBC announced in February that it planned to slash its cost base by £500M ($675M) over the next three years, expanding on an existing target worth £1.5B.

Sources said Talfan Davies and BBC CFO Bérangère Michel painted a bleak picture of the corporation’s finances. They said it was unsustainable that 94% of the UK population use the BBC every month, but fewer than 80% pay the £180 annual licence fee.

“If we had a funding model that mirrored our consumption, all of this [the cuts] would go away,” he told staff, per one insider. “Our funding model has reached end of life.”

One BBC journalist said the job cuts were “bonkers.” A second BBC source said the corporation was getting some “bad news out of the way” before Matt Brittin, the former Google executive, joins as director general on May 18.

Philippa Childs, head of union Bectu, said: “Cuts of this magnitude will be devastating for the workforce and to the BBC as a whole. The BBC has faced funding cuts over the last decade with real terms income from the licence fee down £1.3B — further cuts of this scale will inevitably damage its ability to deliver on its public mission.”

“BBC staff are already under significant pressure after previous redundancy rounds and Bectu will be engaging with the BBC to understand the implications of these cuts. This will also inevitably impact the wider creative industries ecosystem, given the BBC’s crucial anchor role in commissioning content and nurturing talent.

The BBC’s annual plan, published last month, made clear that the corporation faces “difficult” financial choices and that content would not be protected from cuts.

The BBC has been drawing up radical plans to save £100M through outsourcing thousands of non-content jobs — including HR, finance, legal, and operations — to private sector companies. Deadline revealed details of the changes last year, with executives dubbing the plan Project Ada.

Broadcast, the UK television industry trade title, first reported the 2,000 job cuts figure. Deadline revealed on Tuesday that the BBC was preparing to detail the savings plan today.