BBC spent £500,000 on failed tribunal defence over sacking of CTO John Linwood

Corporation could have settled for £50,000, but chose to pursue the case

The BBC spent nearly £500,000 on trying to defend its sacking of CTO John Linwood, it has been revealed via a Freedom of Information Request.

While the broadcaster had fired Linwood in 2013, effectively blaming the CTO for its failed Digital Media Initiative project that soaked up £98m but was never properly launched or executed, Linwood brought the case to an employment tribunal in August 2014, and subsequently won his case.

The BBC was apparently offered the opportunity - via Linwood's laywer - to settle the case for just £50,000, but it instead chose to pursue its defence, to a tune of £498,000 in costs. This did not include damages paid out personally to Linwood when the BBC was found to be at fault, which amounted to another £80,000.

A spokesman for the BBC said today that the corporation had sought to settle the case "without having to incur the legal costs of a tribunal, but [was] not successful". Linwood's claim on bringing the case to the tribunal was that he had been made the "fall guy" for the project's failure. It was scrapped completely by the BBC's director general Tony Hall in May 2013, in his first few weeks in the post.

The employment tribunal said the BBC's processes around the project were "profoundly substantively and procedurally flawed" and that it was not displaying the actions of a "reasonable employer" in the way it dealt with Linwood.