Unions meet to discuss BBC cuts

Officials from BECTU, NUJ and Unite are due to brief BBC union representatives on substantial cuts at the Corporation.

A meeting today, 18 October, is due to hear details of significant reductions in both staff numbers and the volume of TV programme making.

Senior representatives were briefed in the early morning by Director General Mark Thompson, whose savings package is intended to deal with a £2.2 billion shortfall in BBC funding over the next six years.

Members of the BBC Trust, the Corporation's governing body, yesterday approved the package, and confirmed that the BBC would still be expected to introduce a range of new services.

In negotiations with the government last year over a new Royal Charter, the BBC pledged to extend its range of on-line content, as well as an expansion of local television, and other new services, in an effort to justify an above-inflation increase in its annual Licence Fee from UK households.

However, the government eventually set a six-year formula for licence increases of 2% for most of the period, which provided no extra funding for the planned new services.

The meeting of representatives is expected to demand that the BBC should set in place a top-level negotiating framework which would ensure that any staff threatened with redundancy are given the best possible opportunity for re-skilling or redeployment.

Union officials have stressed that industrial action ballots could be run across the BBC if management refuse to agree a national level framework, or if the Corporation prematurely calls for volunteers for redundancy.