2500 jobs to go at BBC in budget cuts

Director general Mark Thompson said the BBC would create some new jobs and offer redeployment to other staff. The net loss across the UK will be 1800, as he tries to plug a 2 billion funding shortfall. In Scotland there will 230 job losses, although 130 new positions will be created.

The BBC also confirmed the sale of its iconic Television Centre building in Shepherd's Bush, west London where thousands of staff are based. Union chiefs today warned industrial action was "inevitable".

The NUJ has launched a scathing attack on the top brass of the corporation, calling on them to consider their positions.

Stephen Lowe, NUJ union representative for Edinburgh and Glasgow, said: "It's ludicrous. We've had two years of ongoing cuts and redundancies - they've bled the place dry. They're still looking for voluntary redundancies from the last process, so I don't see where or how they are going to cut back further without doing less.

"What we are dealing with here is management failure on a grand scale. They failed to get an appropriate licence fee settlement, and then failed to plan for that.

"Industrial action is inevitable. There are plenty of options as well as strike action."

It is likely to lead to more programmes made by independent companies being bought by the BBC. This approach has already got the corporation into trouble.

A trailer made by an independent firm featured clips of the Queen it wrongly claimed showed her storming out of a photo shoot. The BBC is cutting ten per cent from the number of programmes it commissions, which will lead to more repeats on television, in an effort to make efficiency savings of three per cent a year.

BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said the trustees would be making sure the cuts would not damage the quality or "distinctiveness" of the BBC. But Mr Low attacked the move. He said: "Mr Thompson is saying we are going to sack people in the BBC to allow huge companies like Endemol to come in and make money from the licence fee."

Officials from the broadcasting workers union Bectu were meeting with their NUJ counterparts today to discuss a response.

After meeting Mr Thompson, Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of Bectu, said unions were willing to negotiate with the BBC to help make savings.

He said: "We're saying we want to enter a meaningful dialogue with the BBC. That meaningful dialogue cannot take place against the background of the BBC writing out to people, saying come and collect your redundancy cheques."