£950k pay-off for BBC chief Byford

THE former second-in-command at the BBC got a redundancy payment of about £950,000 when he left the corporation last month.

Mark Byford, who was made redundant when his deputy director general role was eliminated as part of a cost-cutting exercise, joined the corporation in 1979 as a television researcher at BBC Leeds. Newspaper reports claimed yesterday that Mr Byford will also be eligible for pension payments by 2013, on top of the 950,000. Details of his redundancy package will be included in the BBC's accounts, which are due to be published next month.

Mr Byford, from Castleford, West Yorkshire, became deputy director general in January 2004.Within three weeks of his appointment, Greg Dyke resigned as head of the BBC.

Mr Byford took on the position of acting director general for five months until Mark Thompson was appointed to the role.

A BBC spokeswoman said: "We have made significant progress on reducing both our senior manager headcount and pay bill, and we are on target to reach our proposed reductions."