Cash-Strapped BBC Splashes-Out On Art

Artistic works commissioned to mark the refurbishment of the BBC's Broadcasting House are reported to be costing the licence fee payer dearly - despite the continuing recession and associated job cuts at the state broadcaster.

The news emerged in an report by the Sunday Times at the weekend which claimed that the corporation spent £25,000 just to send a remote-controlled model helicopter equipped with a camera flying over Broadcasting House for just two minutes.

It was part of an arts celebration of the corporation's flagship building in central London that is costing licence fee-payers £3.9m.

The authorative newspaper also reported that a photographer was paid £70,000 to take pictures of those involved in refurbishing the building and three artists received £24,000 between them just to design 'wraps' to hide the project's scaffolding.

Another artist has received £150,000 to create an archive of visitors to the building.

The spending by the BBC's public art group is revealed in documents obtained under freedom of information laws. The cost includes £760,000 for designing and planning the work, as well as employing Modus Operandi, a firm of arts consultants.

The arts bill is part of an £813m project to renovate the 1930s art deco building in Portland Place and add a large extension.

The complex is meant to house all radio, news and World Service broadcasts when it is completed in 2012. It is already three years late and £20m over budget.

A public piazza designed by Mark Pimlott, a Canadian-born artist, is also costing £1.65m.

The Broadcasting House bill forms part of £4.88m that the BBC spent on art in the past decade, including £372,000 on a piece by Toby Paterson outside its new Glasgow headquarters, criticised for looking like a washing line.

Philip Davies, a Tory member of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said: "The BBC do not live in the real world. This kind of largesse would be unthinkable to any other organisation in the public sector.

"I favour top-slicing the BBC's licence fee income and handing the money to commercial broadcasters to do something to serve the public."

Last year, the BBC continued to cut jobs as it said it was facing recession.

The flagship Newsnight was hit by a 15% budget cut in May, for example, and two BBC environment and science reporters also lost their jobs as part of BBC News's continued work to reduce costs.

Those cuts represented the third year of a rolling programme of cuts in BBC News. In the previous two years, cost savings resulted from the merging of TV, radio and online journalists into the multimedia newsroom and the creation of a single programmes department.

Overall, the BBC expected to see 2,500 post closures in total, with 1,800 redundancies and around 700 staff redeployed.

Trade union BECTU was pressing BBC News management to ensure that the job cuts didn't leave remaining staff with excessive workloads, which put their welfare at risk.

The union was also insisting that the strategy for cutting costs posed a threat to output and to staff health and safety because of additional burdens imposed on remaining workers.

Many of those who remain and those who lost their jobs during the cutbacks will therefore be unimpressed by the corporation's artistic largesse.

(BMcC/GK)