BBC.co.uk overspent by 48 percent in 2007/08 because management is “not sufficiently strong” and “financial oversight has not been sufficiently effective”, according to the BBC Trust’s review in to the service, which demands an overhaul of the top team by December and has ordered online investment be frozen until then.
The review said last year’s BBC.co.uk expenditure, which excludes iPlayer and streaming media, “at £110million, is much higher than the upper level of spend permitted in its Service Licence of £81.6million”, which includes a 10 percent overspend buffer on the actual budget of £74.2 million. And it screamed that “the true level of spending on the service has only become known as a result of this review”: “This lack of financial accountability is not acceptable.”
— ‘More robust management’ needed: In scathing criticism, the trust primarily blamed the BBC’s 2007 restructure, which split BBC New Media across four units, leading to “misallocation between cost centres”. It noted “weaknesses in both the service