BBC spent £25m on severance pay for top managers

Just 150 senior bureaucrats pocketed an average of £164,200 each in severance payments over three years.

One individual got nearly £900,000, including £300,000 that was not in his or her contract.

Another was so shocked to receive £376,000 as to send it back with a note saying “they would not wish to benefit from a payment that could not be demonstrated to be fully and appropriately authorised”.

In scathing findings, spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) said the corporation repeatedly breached its own guidelines by handing out excessive amounts of licence payers money, including to people who had new jobs lined up.

Its astonishing open-handedness was “poor value for money,” the NAO said, and gobbled up over two thirds of some £35 million saved by axing the jobs in the first place.

In almost a quarter of 60 cases reviewed by the NAO, the BBC paid out more than the staff were entitled to under their contracts - costing licence-payers more than £1 million.

Senior managers also had to sign confidentiality clauses preventing them from revealing details about the circumstances of their departure or severance payment.

Since the recession hit in 2008, severance payments to BBC managers have risen by £26,000 on average, from £165,000 to £191,000.

The figures will add to pressure on BBC chairman Lord Patten who has faced criticism over the deal for George Entwistle when he quit as director general.

The report revealed:

• Mark Byford, who as deputy director general was on £474,500, received the maximum possible salary in lieu of notice, despite talks on a redundancy settlement starting eight months before he left. He walked away with a £949,000 severance package, as well as £73,000 for leave not taken before 2004.

• A payoff to former director general George Entwistle, who quit after just 52 days in the job was even higher than the £450,000 previously reported. The NAO found that he was also paid an extra £25,000 in salary for three weeks service from the day his resignation was announced until November 30.

• Caroline Thomson, the former Chief Operating Officer, was given a package worth £680,400 after 17 years service - £40,000 per year served - including £335,000 in lieu of notice, after she was passed over for the post of Director General. The NAO said this was “in line with BBC policy”.

• A senior manager was given a £376,000 severance deal in a process branded “seriously deficient” by the NAO. On learning of the internal BBC procedure, the individual wrote to the BBC to pay back the money, net of tax, enclosing a cheque thought to be around £240,000.

NAO head Amyas Morse said: “The BBC has too often breached its own already generous policies on severance payments. Weak governance arrangements have led to payments that exceeded contractual requirements and put public trust at risk.”

Between April 2005 and March 2013, the BBC awarded severance payments totalling £369 million to 7,500 staff, an average of £49,200. This included payments totalling £60 million to 401 senior BBC managers. The corporation is aiming to shave £700 million off its payroll by 2016.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller said: “The NAO has exposed a culture of pay-offs that simply cannot be justified.”

The BBC’s new director-general, Tony Hall, said he accepted the NAO’s conclusions and added: “The level of some of these payments was wrong.”

Mr Hall said the BBC had “lost its way on payments in recent years” and he has already announced moves to cap payments at £150,000 and improve the process.

He added: “It is important to understand what was happening here. The BBC was trying to get its senior management headcount down, and it succeeded, reducing it from 640 to 445.

“As the NAO acknowledges, we have saved £10 million over the period studied by the report and will keep on making savings every year.”

The report found there was “insufficient challenge and oversight” when payments were made.

The BBC Trust, which oversees the Corporation but only decides pay for the director general, said the NAO conclusions were “deeply worrying”.

But Tory MP Rob Wilson accused the Trust, chaired by Lord Patten, of presiding over “a colossal waste of public money”.