£150m licence fee shortfall sees BBC cut 1,000 jobs and merge IT roles

IT department looks set to shrink as broadcaster has to make 'some hard choices'

The director-general of the BBC, Tony Hall, has announced that a projected £150m shortfall in licence fee collection is forcing him to cut 1,000 jobs from the organisation, as well as merging technology, engineering and digital teams.

"These changes will save £50m a year," said Hall in a letter to employees yesterday.

"And, you know as well as I do, that many of those savings will be roles that we close. We estimate over a thousand jobs will go."

In terms of merging the tech teams, Hall commented that the BBC was "looking at the number of divisions we need."

"As a first step, I've asked Ralph Rivera, Matthew Postgate and David Gibbons to bring together our teams in Technology, Engineering and Digital. And, that's not just in the public service, but across Worldwide too. It's just a start - and, over the next few months, I'll be working with our Directors to see what more we can do."

Speaking on BBC News, Hall said the climate the BBC now exists in is leading to it having to "make some hard choices".

"And this is the beginning of the hard choices," he warned.

Hall described how the number of households with actual televisions is "diminishing - slowly, but it's diminishing" and that by the end of 2016, the BBC will have £150m less funding from licence fees.

But Hall said that making redundancies is the way to begin achieving his financial plans for the organisation since taking up the post of director-general in 2013, after a history at the BBC that saw him in the post of director of news between 1993 and 2001.

"When I came back into this organisation I said I wanted a simpler, more effective, more efficient BBC and that's why today I've said we're going to lose 1,000 jobs out of management and support services, and so on.

"I want to ensure as much money as possible is going in the places that licence fee payers pay us for i.e. programmes and services. That's important."

Hall's decision won't be the first time the BBC's IT department has been adversely affected in recent years, as 2014 saw CTO John Linwood dismissed after a "Digital Media Initiative" was scrapped, wasting £98.4m of taxpayers' money.

Linwood subsequently won an unfair dismissal case against his former employers, at one point describing himself as the "fall guy" for the failed project, which he said was subject to changes in requirements and unclear instructions from the BBC.