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Efficiency at the BBC: Delivering quality content for the licence fee payer

Anne Bulford

Managing Director of Finance and Operations

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As Managing Director of Finance and Operations at the BBC, my responsibilities extend to looking after finance, legal, technology, and business support services.  I first worked at the BBC in the 1990s, rejoining about 18 months ago. The role I have now is to make it as easy as possible for everybody to do great work. That comes about in two ways: by keeping things simple; and, making sure as much money as possible goes into the content people see and experience.

Working here we all have a very special responsibility to get best value for the licence fee. That comes with a duty to make the best quality content and keep support costs as efficient as possible. At the same time we've had to face some very tough challenges. The combination of a licence fee 'frozen' at £145.50 for since 2010 and the additional obligations the Government attaches to the fee means that we have in real terms 26% less to spend on public service content than it would have been by 2016/17. So when I came here to work with Tony and the team my job was to put financial rigor and efficiency right at the heart of the corporate agenda.

In February 2014, Tony Hall gave a speech at the Oxford Media Convention where he argued that although the BBC had done much to become efficient, we must never stop looking for ways to do more.  At the same time, Tony asked me to carry out an efficiency review, looking both at the BBC’s record and where we can go further to deliver value for money for Licence Fee payers.

The BBC now vs. 20 years ago.

We already get quite brilliant value out of the licence fee. If I look back to 20 years ago when I was first at the BBC, there were two televisions stations and five national radio stations. Now we've got four times as much television, twice as many national radio services plus iPlayer and a global web service. There's much, much more content available out there - more for less. The £145.50 Licence Fee equates to £2.80 a week – comparatively excellent value.

The report published today shows the BBC is now a much improved organisation. We are now more efficient than we were. We're better run, better organised and we're doing more for less. We have delivered £1.1 billion annual savings since 2007. And in just 4 years we have reduced the proportion of licence fee spent on professional support by a quarter (since 2010).

This has been achieved through property rationalisation, procurement and a wide range of initiatives in every part of the BBC.

On property, we have reduced our estate significantly. The BBC now occupies 154 buildings down from 213 and plan to save £67m a year by the end of Charter. We have also reached our target of more than half of staff being based outside London.

On personnel and pay, we’ve been able to save £150m per year through pay restraint and agreed headcount reductions. The BBC pays in line with, and in some cases below, the overall market. We've reduced the number and paybill of senior managers by more than a third.

And on procurement, we have saved £70 million this year by re-procuring major long-term contracts and good and services contracts. Our current IT service contract was renegotiated, and combined with some new ways of working, will deliver almost £90 million in cumulative savings by the end of Charter.

In all, the BBC will deliver over £1.5 billion of cumulative annual net savings by the end of this charter period in 2016/17. This is a significant in the context of £3.2 billion of licence fee that the BBC controls.

We still have more to deliver, some £400 million and through our "compete or compare" plans we will continue to look for opportunities to simplify and reduce costs.

Everyone at the BBC is dedicated to producing great work. For 3p per hour of output and 40p a day we believe the Licence Fee payer can be confident they are getting good value from an organisation committed to delivering the best and to delivering value of money.

Read the full report on Inside the BBC

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