Despite having an army of its own senior managers the public broadcaster has spent more than £25million on management consultants, official records showed.
BBC waste (Image: Getty)
BBC chiefs have splashed out more than £25million on outside management consultants in the past five years — despite the Corporation employing an army of highly paid senior managers.
Figures showed the licence-fee funded broadcaster handed £25.4million to consultancy firms between 2021 and 2025 for advice on strategy, finance, staffing and technology.
The spending means millions from households paying the soon to be £180-per-year TV licence fee ended up in the pockets of City advisory firms rather than being spent on TV programmes.
Critics of the Corporation have attacked the spending on managers by pointing to the fact the BBC already has a vast internal management structure overseeing its operations.
Latest official figures showed it employed 236 senior managers, all of who were paid more than £100,000, of which the top five had salaries in excess of £350,000 per year.
BBC Broadcasting House (Image: PA)
At the top of the BBC’s executive committee sat the currently vacant post of Director-General, with an annual salary of £540,000.
Despite that, the Corporation continued to bring in consultants to advise its own leadership on how the organisation should be run.
During the past five years it spent £10million on consultants for help with finance issues, £3.8million on human resources problems, £1million on IT advice and another £9.7million for help with “strategy” issues.
During that time City consultancy giants such as PWC, Deloitte and McKinsey were all awarded contracts worth more than £1million for their advice.
The consultancy spending came as the BBC operated on a budget of around £5.9billion a year, funded largely by the £3.8billion taken from the pockets of licence fee payers.
Recent months have been turbulent for the public broadcaster as it was sucked into a series of political rows about its coverage and the way it dealt with problems.
The BBC faced intense scrutiny following the Huw Edwards scandal, which prompted an independent review into its workplace culture.
It was also criticised for serious editorial failings in a documentary about children in Gaza, which its senior management admitted had damaged trust in the organisation.
Management consultants (stock image) (Image: Getty)
There was also a row over the coverage of Glastonbury festival where staff failed to initially edit out violent antisemitic chants from one of the acts.
These controversies have added to the pressure on BBC leadership and contributed to upheaval at the top and the eventual resignation of its last Director-General Tim Davie.
Callum McGoldrick, investigations campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Licence fee payers will be baffled that a broadcaster already stuffed with highly paid executives feels the need to hand tens of millions to outside consultants to tell it how to run itself.
“When households are being forced to pay £180 a year just to watch TV legally, the BBC should be ruthlessly focused on cutting waste rather than shovelling cash to City advisory firms.
“This kind of spending only strengthens the case for scrapping the licence fee and forcing the BBC to live within its means.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “Like many organisations, the BBC sometimes uses consultancy services to access specialist skills and expertise for specific projects beyond routine work.
“We are reviewing all consultancy spend as part of our continued drive for greater efficiency.”