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3,172 applications, 34 people employed. And a whalloping great lump of people shipping up from London every week on expenses.

Why am I not surprised? It was ever thus.

The annoying thing is, there's a wealth of talent here in Manchester just waiting to be tapped into. The BBC had a real chance to reinvent itself with the move to Salford, but it's too set in its ways and prefers to commute its existing staff up from London at great expense. Would be interesting to know what percentage of our TV License goes in train fares, hotel accommodation and flats in the MediaCity area - money that could be spent on quality programmes. OK, maybe some of those staff were on long term contracts so maybe they had no choice, but the Salford move was years in the making so they really should have planned ahead more.

Of course this was going to happen. How many local people would actually have the right skills to work there.

Plus how many companies that require technical or skilled workforce have a majority of there workforce living in the local area.

You'd be surprised. Manchester has a very vibrant creative industry presence, ranging from independent 3D studios, video editing suites to PR/advertising agencies, and anything inbetween. OK, maybe not on the scale on London, but if you're moving into another area at least tap into their local resources to save money.

I'm biased in that I live in Manchester, but it's such a wasting opportunity not to take advantage of the excellent local creative community here.

While I support the idea of such cost savings the reality is that people do not want to travel to Manchester for an interview, so they still have to retain a central London presence and the talent will simply not migrate to Manchester because of the property differential. They fear never being able to get back on the London property ladder.

Doesn't seem to be, or at least not as makes any difference. BBC Breakfast broadcasts from Salford and that's basically a show full of interviews. PLus 5 live do as well which is much the same unless it's doing sports commentary. The reality is for most things there's actually no longer any real requirement to have the interviewer and the interviewee in the same place.


That was always going to happen though, they were never going to move lock stock & barrel up North. In fact, I believe, New Broadcasting house cost considerably more than their MediaCity presence.


Yeah, after all, it's not as if we've got (for example) two football clubs full of people being paid 150K a week or better who all live in very nice houses and one of the largest independent broadcasting hubs outside London already.


The 'talent' is paid well enough and, in fact, most of them don't actually live near either Broadcasting House either. There are a number of reasons why some people didn't move north when their programs did - uprooting family etc - which I can kind of understand, but the fact is you can buy a house up north for the price of a house in London, it's just that there are also houses up north you can buy for a price that won't get you a house in the London. If you want to buy a house worth £300K or £700K or £2.5million or whatever, those houses exist around Manchester.


Well, as long as the skillset required is 'painting yourself with woad and calling upon the gods to make fire', we're well in.

While the top talent can afford to buy homes back in London, the technical people may not be willing to take the risk, plus as you say family ties will end such notions of moving. If staff did move they would have to stay on the same salary, so the only cost savings would be from cheaper local staff, and rent/mortgage/rates. While you might get a great home up north for the money, it lacks being in London with all the other media events.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

When a company relocates, it's perfectly normal for a lot of existing staff to commute long distances in the beginning. How many days and hours have they been there now?

Some will move closer, but moving house can take a long time. There will also be natural attrition, and as vacancies appear they may be filled by more local people.

They have in just a few days directly employed 34 people against a background of 11,400 locally unemployed? That's a brilliant start.

It's a good thing for the area to have a big new employer and they should celebrate the new opportunities that are already unfolding. All those mouths need feeding, and not everyone is going to bring a packed lunch! Offices need cleaning and maintaining. The list of local services of all kinds employed is likely to be a lengthy one.

This is a non-story. Try again in two years and see if they want the BBC to move away...

Dunno, how long is twelve months in hours? That's basically how long they've been broadcasting from there for (BBC Breakfast first broadcast from Salford was April 10 2012 according to the BBC's own publicity) . The BBC have paid out l£11 million in relocation expenses, apparently.


"Just a few days?' You make it sound like they moved in last week. Even if they have a cadre of highly skilled technical staff that they had to relocate, what about all the unskilled/partially skilled stuff? Office staff etc? Obviously there will a be a lot of staff contracted out (cleaners etc) who haven't been counted, but are you really suggesting it only takes 34 people to run the back end of a major broadcasting centre?

Given the relocation expenses I suspect they've actually just moved people up from London en masse and the number of new jobs created has been relatively minimal. £11million is a lot of moving vans and bridging loans.


Yes, all 34 of them.

I am actually in support of such moves for many companies. That was one of the reasons why Labour wanted to move as many government jobs into economic black spots as it would create a floor for local employment. As you say there will be many jobs that are just as easily solved by locals such as cleaning catering building maintenance etc.

Give it time.
I totally agree with the comments about the impact so far being barely noticeable on the local employment figures, but things will change, students will graduate, jobs will be left and jobs will be sought, and inevitably over a few years the uptake of locals will improve.
I'm not a huge fan of the BBC, having briefly brushed up against them a couple of times.

Got caught on Cowboy Traders? Only kidding.

Nah, Crimewatch I reckon!

I'm unclear as to your point, but if you're the BBC and you've got a pile of applicants for a role, then trust me that the students with the degrees and relevant experience are going to be at the top of the pile.
The general observation amongst friends is that even on the camera floor, you bet most of the staff on the tech side have got a degree.