The Auto Auction Group

The watchdog for the BBC, the BBC Trust has been accused of misusing its resources. The Trust is entrusted with the responsibility of providing the best deal to all those who pay licence fee. But is attracted attention when it rejected the shared offices offered to it within the building owned by the corporation and went in for rented property.

This January the trust leased the first floor of an Edwardian building in the heart of London for its sixty odd employees. The lease period is eight years and the price is £2.2m. Further a lot of money has been spent on refurbishing the old building. According to one estimate £400,000 was spent on adding special fittings to the building and another £250,000 was spent on the interior design of the office.

This huge expenditure incurred by the Trust at a time when its very existence is in doubt has raised many eyebrows. The Tories have already declared war on this issue and announced that they will scrap the BBC Trust if they are voted in during the next general election. The Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw has also announced that the government’s sympathy lies with the Corporation and not with the Trust.

The reason provided by the Trust for this controversial shift is that they need to be housed in a separate building to assert their independence. Earlier it was sharing office with two other departments in a building owned by the BBC. That building was sold off and the Trust refused to accept the new alternative space provided by the Corporation citing its need to have a separate identity.

The report of the National Audit Office is now awaited. The report will give detailed information about how money was spent on another project of renovating the Broadcasting House. The Trust is expecting more brick bats on account of this report.

The report is said to have pointed out that the project has cost £20m and it is still two years behind. Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture minister has raised the issue questioning the logic of spending such huge amount of money by the Trust, which functions as a watchdog for proper use of public money.