BBC STAFF TAKE 20,000 SICK DAYS FOR MENTAL HEALTH
BBC staff took more than 20,000 days off work for mental health reasons last year, new figures reveal.
Employees at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster took 20,884 sick days in the year to the end of March for psychological reasons including stress, depression and anxiety.
That represents just under a fifth of the total sickness absence taken last year, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
However, the real figure is likely to be higher because no reason was given for more than half of the sick days taken. Physical illness accounted for just over 36,000 days.
Sick leave has surged to a record high across Britain. Figures released last month showed UK workers missed 9.4 working days on average last year because of sickness.
By this measure, the BBC is below average, with employees in its public service broadcasting division taking 6.7 sick days each. The figures do not include staff in the corporation’s commercial arm, which is not funded by the licence fee.
But the absences come amid repeated rounds of job and programming cuts at the BBC, which is scrambling to save £700m to plug a black hole in its finances.
The broadcaster said in January that it will cut 130 jobs from the World Service in a move that sparked concerns about Britain’s ability to counter propaganda from Russian and Chinese state media.
That followed hundreds of other redundancies across the BBC’s news output that has affected flagship programmes including Newsnight.
A recent email to BBC journalists, seen by The Telegraph, outlined a further slate of cost-saving measures, including stricter rules for staff around managing leave, taking taxis and attending events.
Bosses said: “It’s no secret that we are under a lot of financial pressure and it is in all our interests to reduce discretionary spend where we can.”
In addition to the cutbacks, the BBC has also been rocked by a string of recent scandals, including criticism of its coverage of the Gaza conflict and its broadcasting of anti-Semitic comments by punk duo Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, as well as misconduct allegations at MasterChef.
Tim Davie, the director general, has survived calls for his resignation after Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, took aim at a “series of catastrophic failures” by the broadcaster.
The BBC chief is now locked in discussions with the Government over the future of the licence fee funding model ahead of the end of the current charter period in 2027.
He has called for an end to “grinding” cuts at the corporation after a series of freezes and cuts to the licence fee saw its income plunge by 30pc in real terms between 2010 and 2020.
A BBC spokesman said: “While this level of absence broadly reflects what we see happening across the UK, the welfare of our staff is of paramount importance, and we have a wide range of measures in place to support people who need it.”
2025-10-04T14:05:15Z
