BBC Current Affairs Culls Over 30 Jobs

The BBC has announced the loss of over 30 jobs in its TV Current Affairs department.

The move is part of a 'restructure' with affected positions in the department to include reporting roles as well as production and support posts in London and Manchester.

In total, 12 of the posts to be cut are journalist roles, 14 are producer or picture editor roles and the rest support positions such as researcher.

The BBC said the changes aim to increase flexibility by allowing programme makers to vary staff levels in order to manage "peaks and troughs" in production, and are designed to ensure the BBC can "keep pace with the fast-changing media environment".

This is a 22% cut in full-time staff, although, the BBC's current affairs 'head count' of 135 full time staff will remain "broadly the same", the corporation said, as more people will be employed on short-term contracts, evening out the loss of the 31 full-time posts.

Twenty-six of the 31 redundancies are journalists, producers or picture editors. The remaining five are support roles, including a researcher and an archivist.

The news comes just after BBC Vision Productions announced last week that it was to lose just fewer than 50 staff from its factual and natural history units in Birmingham and Bristol.

Overall, the BBC is looking to make cuts of up to 20% across all departments over four years following October's licence fee settlement, which will see the corporation's funding frozen until 2017 - a 16% cut in real terms. The BBC is also taking on extra funding commitments, including the World Service and most of S4C's budget.

The World Service is losing 650 staff and BBC Online 360 in cuts announced since the New Year.

(BMcC/GK)