The BBC move to Salford MediaCity has received a fair amount of coverage – powers in London hail the move as a structural change in the TV market to reduce dependence on the capital and to pump up ‘the regions’. However, cities like Newcastle are seeing the blood sucked out of their creative economies because of the focus on Manchester… which, to add to the challenge, is much trickier to reach by train than London.
The latest report says that the BBC may go £91million over budget on the move. Just think what we could do in Newcastle with a spare £9million, let alone £91million! I can give you a shopping list for Hoults Yard’s media cluster… TV studios, post-grad training centre, superfast broadband, warehouse flats, funky bars, live music venues, more fab offices… and, being a commercial player, we’d happily invest the bulk of the money against the business plan (with appropriate incentives from the heritage lottery fund or whoever!?).
But, just to clarify, the £95million is the current estimate of the overspend. The budget is £350m, including enlightened projects like moving BBC Sport to Manchester in 2011, only a year before the Olympics in London 2012. And, the article below reckons ‘The BBC …has committed to paying 95 per cent of the value of the London homes of staff choosing to relocate from the capital.’
I picked up the latest story from Crain’s Manchester Business news:
9:45 am, July 20, 2009
Media City move could cost BBC an extra £91m
By Simon Binns
The BBC’s decision to move five departments to Media City on Salford Quays could be £91m more expensive than keeping them in London, according to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph.
A 2006 report called BBC North – the value for money case, obtained though the Freedom of Information Act, said the £350m move to Salford could be anything from £75m more expensive to £15m cheaper.
But those figures include £16m of state funding from the government and Salford City Council, conditional on the move going ahead.
Taking away that subsidy, the move to Salford could be “anywhere from £1m to £91m more expensive than staying in London,” according to the report.
The BBC is also likely to obtain a lower price for its Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush due to the declining property market, and has committed to paying 95 per cent of the value of the London homes of staff choosing to relocate from the capital.
A second report obtained by the paper, drawn up for the BBC by relocation firm Governetz, said the fall in property values could land the BBC with an £8m bill for the home purchase scheme.
“In all the circumstances it seems clear that the BBC is at high risk through…weakness of project management control and wholly inadequate staff resourcing,” the report concluded.
Governetz, whose report was compiled last year, said the corporation could be “mired in an employee relations disaster” by September 2009. However, with large numbers of staff voting to make the move to Salford, these fears seem unlikely to be realised.
A BBC spokesman said: “We have never presented Salford as a money-saving project. That said we are working as hard as we can to ensure that the project is delivering the highest possible value for money. In the long term – indeed, over 20 years – we expect savings on London operating costs.”
In December 2006, BBC director-general Mark Thompson, told the corporation’s governors that the move north would be “very cost effective”.
