BBC splashes £5m on consultants
THE BBC spent almost £5million of licence payers’ money on outside consultants last year – a rise of about 40 per cent, it emerged yesterday.
Last week the broadcaster revealed proposals to cut the free TV licence offered to viewers aged 75 and over in a bid to save money.
But the economy drive seems to have been ignored by BBC bosses who hired expensive experts to deal with a series of internal crises.
About £4.4million was splurged on external consultants in 2017/18, up from £3.14million the year before.
The Big Four accounting and professional services companies – PwC, Deloitte, Ernst and Young and KPMG – were among the BBC’s 10 most-used consultancies, according to figures obtained under Freedom of Information laws.
Complaints
BBC director-general Lord Hall of Birkenhead told MPs in 2013 that he wanted to drive down the amount spent after complaints the money should be used on programming.
The efficiency drive initially proved successful, with spending falling from £6.94million, but that trend appears to be in reverse.
The figures were revealed soon after proposals to cut the free TV licence sparked a storm of protest when the BBC said the concession was no longer justified as the wealth of the over-75s had “improved significantly”.
Dame Esther Rantzen, founder of telephone helpline The Silver Line, said: “Television is not a luxury for isolated older pensioners for whom it is literally their only company.
“It would be an act of cruelty to deprive them if they could not afford to pay the licence fee.”
Daily Express readers have slammed the “overblown salaries” of BBC staff and high-earning stars. Others accused the broadcaster of “riding roughshod” over its audience and said it was “time the paying public had the choice of whether to watch it or not”.
At present, about 4.55 million over-75s do not pay the £150.50 licence fee – part of a Government scheme introduced in November 2000 – potentially costing up to £685million a year. But in 2015 the Government decided it would longer provide the funding.
The current concession is set to end in 2020 and the BBC is now consulting on what the future of the scheme will be.
Options could include asking for voluntary payments, introducing means-testing and removing it from pensioners who live with younger no family. The report, carried out by Frontier Economics on behalf of the BBC, raised concerns over the future cost of maintaining the current scheme.
It forecasted that by 2021/2022 the cost of free licences to the BBC would be £745million – more than twice the £365million paid out by the Government in 2001/2002.