BBC HR chief Stephen Kelly was paid a total of £431,000 in the last financial year, according to figures revealed in the corporation’s annual report.
As director of BBC People, Kelly is a member of the executive board and his remuneration package detailed in the BBC’s financial statements.
His base pay for 2007-08 was £320,000, on top of which he earned a bonus of £33,000, expenses and benefits worth £16,000 and a ‘cash pensions supplement’ of £62,000.
Kelly joined the BBC in October 2006 after seven years at BT. He replaced Stephen Dando, who moved to news agency Reuters earlier that year.
BBC director-general Mark Thompson earned a total of £816,000, although he decided not to take up his annual bonus – potentially £64,000 – because of the “scale of disruption and uncertainty” across the corporation. The BBC is axing up to 1,800 jobs, prompted by a smaller than expected licence fee settlement from the government.
Thompson defended the salaries of executive directors saying that the organisation must offer competitive salaries for top jobs.
But Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of broadcasting union Bectu, criticised the figures. “Despite the substantial upheaval and upset which BBC staff have had to endure in the past year with the loss of almost 2,000 jobs, it is astonishing that executive directors, who are already paid handsomely, should choose to take their bonuses,” he said.
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