The BBC spent more than £8.3 million of licence fee cash on management consultants last year, prompting criticism from staff unions and campaign groups at a time of redundancies and programme cutbacks.
The £8,331,272 bill for outside advice on strategy, finance, staffing and computers equates to more than £160,000 every week, according to figures disclosed under Freedom of Information rules.
Consultant spending details
More than four in every £10 spent on consultants went to one firm alone: American management consultancy giant Boston Consulting Group, whose £3.6 million fee was the largest the Corporation has paid to a single adviser in the eight years it has disclosed such spending.
The total bill is equivalent to more than 46,000 households' £180 licence fees, a compulsory charge for a service the public rate at just five out of 10 for value for money.
Criticism from unions and campaigners
Darwin Friend, research director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Taxpayers will be sick of all the money that is being wasted at the BBC. Spending millions on consultants flies in the face of licence fee payers who want to see value for money. The BBC licence fee should be scrapped and not spent further increasing their bloated bureaucracy."
Philippa Childs, Head of Bectu, the union representing staff who operate behind the cameras and microphones, said: "At a time when the BBC was facing severe financial difficulties and making significant redundancies, the choice to spend millions on management consultants is questionable. Everyone facing the loss of their job will ask why the BBC prioritised this spending. The BBC should be investing all it can in retaining talented people, not paying external consultants. The commitment this year to reduce such spending is welcome but must be delivered upon."
Financial context and response
In April the BBC promised "immediate" controls on consultancy spending as part of a drive to save £500 million and shed up to 2,000 jobs. That crackdown came only after last year's bill had been run up, and the axe has since fallen on jobs and shows including Blankety Blank, Celebrity Mastermind and Live at the Apollo.
New director-general Matt Brittin, the former Google executive who took charge in May, has already announced 550 job losses and is scrapping desk phones to save £590,000 a year. Spending on corporate overheads jumped by £30 million to £244 million last year while the amount going on programmes fell by £70 million, the Corporation's own accounts showed.
Advice on "strategy and transformation" alone cost £4.7 million last year, the highest figure the BBC has disclosed and more than treble the £1.4 million spent the year before. Yet the Corporation refuses to divulge which projects the consultants worked on, having repeatedly claimed that naming them would damage its commercial interests.
Former director-general Tim Davie, who quit in November after rows over the Corporation's coverage of Gaza and Donald Trump, still collected £565,000 for the year by staying on the payroll until April. It was a year in which the broadcaster also ran up a £121 million deficit and lost more than half a million licence-paying households. Over the eight years for which figures are available the BBC has handed consultancies a total of £42 million.
Writing in the annual report published in July, Mr Brittin said: "Making the savings we require will not be easy and will inevitably have an impact on what we make and how we deliver it."
In its response to the request the BBC said it used consultancies "on an ad hoc basis when external expertise and experience are required for specific projects". It said the rise was down to "wider work involved in Charter renewal and strategic transformation" and that it was now "strengthening controls on consultancy spend".
Tamzen Isacsson, chief executive of the Management Consultancies Association, said: "As someone who has worked in house at the BBC for a decade and now in consultancy, I have no doubt that the skills and expertise from this industry could help the world's best broadcaster continue to thrive in a competitive media market and deliver brilliant programmes for listeners and viewers."
A BBC spokesperson said: "Like many organisations, the BBC uses consultancy services to access specialist skills and expertise for specific projects. While these figures reflect work carried out across a large and complex organisation, we want to reduce spending in this area. In April, we introduced immediate cost control measures, including on consultancy spend, as part of the savings required over the next three years."
