Post by Focus on Jun 8, 2013 9:13:33 GMT
For BBC bosses, the sumptuous Roux At The Landau restaurant, with its art deco furnishings and grand paneled dining room, has established itself in recent weeks as an unofficial staff canteen.
And the ritzy eatery, run by renowned father and son chefs Albert and Michel Roux Jr — and located just across the street from New Broadcasting House in London — is just the sort of establishment that puts a serious dent in the generous expense accounts of the Corporation’s senior executives.
And it’s all funded, of course, by you, the taxpayer.
Late and over budget : BBC's new HQ, New Broadcasting House in London's West End, cost taxpayers' £1billion
After years out in the rather rundown surroundings of White City in West London — where the old Television Centre was situated until it was abandoned in March — the BBC’s faceless bigwigs are delighted to find themselves in the heart of the West End.
But then such day-to-day extravagance is merely a drop in the ocean when it comes to the bloated, publicly funded state broadcaster.
Take the brand spanking new HQ, New Broadcasting House, which was officially opened by the Queen yesterday. The huge steel-and-glass edifice has taken a decade to erect, at a cost of an astonishing £1 billion.
The new home to 6,000 BBC staff, which stands next to the original Thirties Broadcasting House in Portland Place, was finished four years behind schedule and — at a conservative estimate — £55 million over-budget.
This rises to £110 million when you include the cost of extending the lease and upgrading technology at the Bush House offices because New Broadcasting House was not finished on time.
Royal opening : Queen Elizabeth II, pictured watching a performance by Irish band The Script in the 'Live Lounge', officially opened the new BBC Broadcasting House yesterday
The original architect walked out on the project halfway through, after differences with BBC management, who commissioned a £1.6 million statue in a piazza, and a £900,000 torch-like sculpture on the roof.
The National Audit Office (NAO) criticized the BBC for failing to get value for money during its £2 billion spending spree on its three new HQs around the country. The state finance watchdog said the Corporation showed ‘weak governance’ and accused it of failing to follow good practice.
One of those involved in the planning was the BBC’s ‘creative director’ Alan Yentob, who, the Mail revealed this week, is paid two salaries — one in the region of £150,000 for presenting the Imagine series, on top of the £183,300 a year he already picks up.
Another damning report by the NAO last month criticized it over its decision to move part of its operation, including Radio 5 Live and children’s programmes, to a purpose-built building in Salford, costing a further £1 billion.
The NAO berated BBC chiefs for paying £24 million in over-generous allowances to persuade London-based staff to move north. Throw in the overspend on BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow and you are looking at an excess of almost £200 million on building projects.
Underground bunker : Staff at the BBC have taken to calling the open-plan newsroom situated under the building's main reception 'The Pit'
Meanwhile, a Tory MP is set to raise concerns that the cost of a hopelessly failed project to make the BBC’s huge video archive available digitally may be considerably over the £100 million to which the Corporation has so far admitted.
Indeed, yesterday it emerged that a whistleblower had warned executives in 2010 that the £95 million worth of benefits that the project would generate was ‘hugely optimistic and difficult to deliver’.
This track record of financial mismanagement inspires little confidence in the BBC’s assertion that the New Broadcasting House is a ‘huge logistical and technological achievement’ which will deliver £700 million of savings to the licence fee-payer.
The no-expense-spared building, which is said to be able to withstand a bomb, covers half a million square feet, is home to three 24-hour news channels, nine radio networks and 26 foreign language services.
It has its own space-age ‘meeting tower’, built on huge stilts in the lobby, and houses what is trumpeted as the most sophisticated newsroom in Europe, featuring trendy orange production suites.
But despite the money lavished on it, things are already going wrong. Journalists who work in the vast glass and steel, open-plan newsroom — a bunker under the building’s main reception — have unhappily christened it ‘The Pit’.
Abandoned : The former BBC Television Centre which was situated in White City
They complain they feel ‘like pandas in a zoo’ because presenters, such as Huw Edwards and Fiona Bruce, sit in front of a glass window that overlooks the desks of banks of journalists. To make matters worse, members of the public can tour the building (for £39 for a family ticket) and often ‘gawp’ at staff.
One senior executive has quit after complaining that his office was too small and its wall so lacking in basic sound-proof protection that he could not hold confidential negotiations with programme makers.
Architecturally, concerns have been expressed that the spiral staircases, a spectacular feature of the newsroom that reaches up 11 floors, are only wide enough to accommodate one person. It is feared it could prove to be a death-trap during a fire.
Likewise, there are said to have been two occasions recently when paramedics, who were called to treat sick staff, were not allowed into the newsroom by security men in case their hi-viz jackets were seen by viewers.
Last month, a news employee, who was suffering a suspected heart attack, was apparently asked if he could walk out of camera-shot to be treated by an ambulance crew.
Meanwhile, some staff have been receiving messages on their computer screens telling them how to behave in case they are within camera-shot. For example, they have been told not to yawn and to hide any sandwiches.
NAO last month criticized the BBC over its decision to move part of its operation to a purpose-built building in Salford, pictured, costing a further £1billion
Other grumbles include workers being ‘treated like children’ as bosses tell them how to use the specially designated ‘huddle zones’ for meetings and advice on office pot plants.
In ridiculous management gobbledegook, one email warned staff: ‘Plants give a strong sense of ownership of a particular desk or area, when we would like staff to feel much more mobile and flexible across the open-plan floor plates.
‘They have been used to form un-collaborative barriers between teams and individuals. Some people are allergic to certain plants and they also attract insects which we don’t want sharing our workplace.’
Bosses’ attempts to boost staff morale included an invitation to 300 employees to attend a ‘People Conference’ in Berkshire this week.
Attempting to recreate the communal euphoria of Glastonbury Festival (featuring teepees on the lawn), the event’s centre piece was a talk by motivational speaker Emmanuel Gobillot.
The Frenchman’s website homepage includes a quote from the writer Flaubert: ‘I’ve always tried to live in an ivory tower but a tide of s*** is beating at its walls!’
The Corporation has denied claims that the event cost £75,000, but BBC staff described the event as ‘pointless’ and a ‘waste of money’.
Little confidence : It is claimed the new no-expenses-spared HQ will save taxpayers £700million
With yet more embarrassing revelations from Operation Yewtree (the police inquiry set up after the appalling catalogue of sexual abuse by former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile became clear), the emergence of these problems could not come at a more difficult time for the recently appointed director-general of the Corporation, Lord Hall.
Last week, he announced he was closing down the Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which was supposed to create a state-of-the-art system to transfer old tapes to a new computerized archive, available to staff from their desktop computers.
The only problem was it didn’t work. When Margaret Thatcher died, video editors at the double atrium newsroom at New Broadcasting House were unable to access library footage of her.
Producers had to ferry old-style videotapes back in a fleet of taxis and on the Tube from storage in North-West London.
With costs on the project up to the £100 million mark, Hall announced that it would be ditched to avoid ‘throwing good money after bad’.
The man responsible for running DMI, the BBC’s chief technology officer John Linwood, has been suspended on full pay from his £287,000-a-year job as a review is launched.
To compound the scandal, however, it was revealed this week that a whistleblower had warned BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten a year ago that the disastrous IT project was an accident waiting to happen.
Former senior BBC manager Bill Garrett, who was head of technology at the BBC’s programme-making division until 2010, wrote to Lord Patten in May last year to tell him of his ‘serious concerns’.
Warned : Lord Patten took over the role as BBC Trust chairman from Sir Michael Lyons in 2011
Yet Patten simply delegated a minion to write back saying he would not be launching a review into the project.
This week, Tory MP Richard Bacon, who sits on the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee, told me he believes the true cost could be substantially higher than £100 million.
‘My information says that it is a lot more than £100 million,’ said Mr Bacon. ‘The committee may look at this very soon because it is a great deal of money that has been completely squandered.’
Meanwhile, trouble is looming on a third front with allegations of corruption. Byron Myers, a former BBC head of human resources, told bosses of his suspicions that a manager was signing off payments, worth tens of thousands of pounds, to his girlfriend’s company.
But he claims that instead of investigating, Corporation executives launched a cover-up.
Finally, after going public with his claims, he says he was sacked and sent by BBC lawyers a copy of the Computer Misuse Act — for which offenders can be sent to jail.
Mr Myers, who also alleges that one of his bosses wanted to get rid of women in senior roles who worked part-time, is in the middle of fighting an industrial tribunal with his former employers. He told me: ‘Initially, I brought my concerns up internally in 2011 as you are required to do, but it was completely hushed up.
Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, pictured centre, and the BBC's director general Tony Hall, pictured left, greet Queen Elizabeth as she officially opened the BBC's new £1 billion home in Portland Place, central London, yesterday
‘As a whistleblower, you are exposing the failure of the management’s risk control within the Corporation, so their inclination is to attack.’
Mr Myers added: ‘There is a culture of secrecy among the management. Every time there’s a scandal, they are forced into disclosures.’
He said it was hypocritical of the BBC management to behave like this when its current affairs teams were constantly highlighting the lack of transparency in other organisations.
The catalogue of scandals facing the BBC ought to give director-general Lord Hall sleepless nights.
But given that he’s an insider who’s spent most of his working life at the BBC, and given the history of profligacy and lack of accountability shown by Aunty’s top management, licence fee-payers will be justified in fearing that the gold-plated BBC gravy train will rumble on unhindered.
£2000 million wasted!! - When I think of what that money could have been spent on and the people it could have really helped I could weep, if it didn't make me so fcking ANGRY - Fx
