BBC to cut almost one in 10 staff to make £500m savings

The BBC has announced it will cut between 1,800 and 2,000 jobs - or almost one in 10 - in an attempt to tackle "significant financial pressures".

The broadcaster needs to make £500m savings over the next two years. Interim director general Rhodri Talfan Davies said the cutbacks would be "really difficult news" for staff.

"For audiences, the job in hand now over the next three or four months is to work through how we make those changes without damaging the services that we know are critical to the BBC across radio and television and online," he told BBC Radio 4's Media Show.

He said the corporation would give more details later this year about how its services would be affected.

Philippa Childs, head of broadcasting union Bectu, warned that "cuts of this magnitude" would be "devastating for the workforce and to the BBC as a whole".

The BBC currently has about 21,500 full time equivalent employees.

In an email to staff on Wednesday, Talfan Davies said: "As you know, the BBC is facing significant financial pressures, which we need to respond to with pace.

"Put simply, the gap between our costs and our income is growing. This is being driven by a number of factors: production inflation remains very high; our licence fee and commercial income is under pressure; and the global economy remains turbulent."

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the BBC, "like every institution", has to make "difficult decisions".

"That is something that I know the leadership of the BBC take very seriously, including exploring commercial options and other revenue raisers that can help to sustain the BBC's finances," she told Radio 4's World at One programme shortly before the announcement.

The news comes in advance of the arrival of a new director general, former Google executive Matt Brittin, who will officially succeed the recently departed Tim Davie on 18 May.

Childs said BBC staff are "already under significant pressure after previous redundancy rounds", and further cuts "will inevitably damage its ability to deliver on its public mission".

She said: "This will also inevitably impact the wider creative industries ecosystem, given the BBC's crucial anchor role in commissioning content and nurturing talent."

She continued: "At a time of fake news and an industry that is becoming more concentrated in the hands of a few multinational corporations, the UK needs a confident, ambitious and sustainably-funded BBC more than ever.

"The government must ensure that Charter Renewal puts the BBC's funding on a more secure, long-term pathway and prevent our national broadcaster facing death by a thousand cuts."