The BBC is spending more than £8 a year from every television licence fee to fund its gold-plated pension scheme for long-serving staff.
Some senior presenters and executives are estimated to have BBC pensions valued at more than £2 million.
A £1.8 billion shortfall in funding for salary-based schemes, which were closed to new employees after 2012, will be funded out of the £147 licence fee until 2028. The closure of the old schemes means that the increasing proportion of female employees are missing out on a significant financial advantage received by veteran male colleagues.
The BBC has stopped publishing the pension entitlement of executive board members but a 2013 report showed that after 33 years, one member earning £166,000 had built up a £2.8 million pension that would provide an annual income of £137,000.
A final-salary scheme operating for staff who joined before 1989 is one of the most generous in the country as there is no cap on the entitlement for highly paid staff and it can be claimed in full from the age of 60.
Advertisement
A later final-salary scheme that capped eligible earnings at £150,600 was closed to new employees in 2006 and two other schemes based on average wages had closed by 2012.
It is understood that fewer than half of the 96 on-air “talent” identified this week as being paid more than £150,000 a year were in salary-based pension schemes.
“Most talent are not BBC staff so are not entitled to a BBC pension,” a BBC spokesman said. “Our final salary pension arrangements closed more than a decade ago and even those who are staff may have decided not to pay into a pension.”
New employees can join a defined contribution scheme based on the income they put into their pension pot with a contribution from the BBC.
