BBC bosses have used their multi-million pound travel budgets to Race Around The World in style.
They spent more than £8,000 on business class flight tickets and almost £400 on taxi rides for staff. The broadcaster has had a ratings hit with a show that sees people scrabble around the globe on busses, boats and trains.
And details of the BBC’s staff expenditure has uncovered huge airplane, taxi and hotel bills that ultimately are being picked up by the licence fee payers.
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The Freedom of Information Act disclosure found an annual £13.2million flight contract, deals for taxi fares up to £10.6m per year and hotel bookings worth £23.6m per year.
(Image: Getty Images)
The highest priced flight tickets were for people who flew around from Heathrow, stopping off first in Singapore and then in Tokyo, Japan. Two business class flights for this journey were bought with British Airways costing £8,303 and £7,816 each.
There were also two business class tickets with Singapore Airline bought for a return trip to Singapore Changi, which cost £7,253 each.
Bosses at the BBC say premium economy and business class flight tickets can be booked depending on the length of the journey and whether the person has to work immediately on arrival.
The broadcaster admitted its most expensive taxi booking in 2022 was for a ride on Christmas Day in which a staff member took a 66-mile cab from Huntington to London for £398 and then made the return journey the same day at an additional cost of £360.
It also spent £330 last year hiring a taxi with wheelchair access to take a passenger just 14 miles from central London to the outer borough of Hounslow.
(Image: Getty Images)
Another £388 was spent on a taxi to bring a person from Birmingham on the 120mile journey to the capital.
Last year the Corporation admitted that the most expensive hotel stay booked through the deal for its staff was a 27-night stay at the Astra Apartments, in Sydney, Australia, which cost a total of £3,545.
It also splashed out £2,600 to put somebody up for 40 nights in the Copthorne Hotel, in Salford, right next to the BBC studios by the quay.
The BBC also admitted to spending £2,344 on three separate occasions to house people for 36 nights each at University of Westminster accommodation near Regent’s Park, just a few hundred yards from its Broadcasting House HQ, in central London.
BBC officials said if staff are required to stay away from their home base overnight they are allowed to stay in a hotel although “costs are always kept to a minimum”.
It said the Sydney booking was for new members of staff being trained in its base in the Australiancity, while the bookings in London and Salford were for people enrolled on its internship scheme.
Bosses at the BBC say the contracts which can all run for seven years and the annual figures are the maximum that can be spent and it is expected expenditure will be less that this total.
Andrew Allison, Chief Executive of the Freedom Association, said: “The BBC, once again, proves it doesn’t care about how it spends our money. It fires established and respected presenters across its local radio network, but wastes money in this way. It really is time to scrap the licence fee and let the BBC fend for itself.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “As a 24-hour media organisation with offices around the world, we are inevitably going to incur travel costs. However, we are mindful that we are spending public money and we have policies in place to ensure spend on travel is proportionate and appropriate.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
