Salary costs of BBC staff working in diversity and inclusion have doubled in the last three years, according to new figures.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed the total amount spent on salaries increased from £830,599 in 2021/22 to £1,688,758 in 2023/24.
The costs detail the total amount spent on salaries for people whose primary role is promoting, planning, or enhancing diversity and inclusion initiatives over the past.
A BBC spokesperson said: “Diversity and inclusion are part of the BBC’s public purposes as set out in our Royal Charter to ensure we serve and reflect all audiences.
“Our workforce diversity and inclusion colleagues work to ensure that we have a workforce that reflects the diversity of the UK and our creative diversity colleagues work to improve on and off-air diversity within productions, ultimately leading to greater representation and authenticity in our content.”
The broadcaster’s three-year diversity, inclusion and belonging strategy – set out in 2021 – saw £243 million worth of TV and radio budgets spent on content from 2021 to 2024.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance – who campaign for lower tax rates for the British taxpayer – believes such roles in workplaces are not necessary.
Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “License fee payers will be furious that the BBC has splashed millions on diversity managers.
“BBC bosses are always pleading poverty when it comes to cuts to services, but seem to have no problem finding more cash for bloated backroom bureaucracies.
“EDI roles inside the public broadcaster should be scrapped.”
The point of scrapping diversity roles is now being echoed in a wider context as Reform UK have pledged to cut jobs in and diversity and inclusion within councils and bring in auditors, with Nigel Farage telling current DEI officers to ‘look for another job’.
In an interview with Channel 4, former Derby County Council Conservative leader Barry Lewis said Reform’s pledges could backfire on themselves.
He said: “Local government auditors are as rare as hen’s teeth, so if Reform can even find them, pay for them to put them in the organisation and do what they think they’re going to be able to do, I would think this would be a monumental waste of cash.”
Featured Image Credit: Alexander Svensson, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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