The BBC is to freeze the pay of its senior management until 2010 as part of a drive to cut costs, the corporation has announced.
The BBC’s 400 most senior employees, including the director-general, Mark Thompson, will have their pay and bonus schemes frozen for 18 months. Other employees will continue to have their pay reviewed.
Thompson sent an email to senior staff yesterday saying it was “not appropriate to award an increase in pay or award a bonus this year to the senior managers of the organisation – but that we should continue with a modest pay review for the majority of the BBC’s employees”.
The move is the latest in a series of cost-cutting measures designed to save the corporation £1.7 billion between now and 2013. Despite the guaranteed funding from the licence fee, the BBC will also need to make additional savings related to the economic downturn.
Broadcasting union Bectu told BBC Online that it had “never been in favour of bonuses being paid so believed this should happen every year, and the money go towards eradicating low pay”.