The BBC will slash its TV team behind broadcasts of royal occasions and veterans' remembrance events to “just one member of staff”.
Staff in the department have been told that all but one member of staff will be axed in order to save costs, according to reports.
This follows the broadcaster’s controversial decision earlier this year to drop its live broadcast of the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey on March 9.
The BBC blamed budget cuts for dropping the event, which it has covered live since 1989.
The department has covered all Royal ceremonial occasions, including the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.
Claire Popplewell will be the only member of the originally six-person team to now stay., The Times reported. She has been the creative director of the team since November 2018 and received the Royal Television Society Outstanding Contribution Award in 2022.
The rest of Popplewell’s team will now reportedly comprise freelancers.
A source told The Times: “They are literally the crown jewel of live British broadcasting. They would never do this for Premiership football events, so what is it about national life that they don’t value?
“Surely this decision must be paused until it can be reassessed by the incoming director-general.”
Sir Michael Ellis KC, a former attorney general who served as an arts minister in Theresa May’s government, told the Daily Mail: “This is another disgraceful anti-British decision from the BBC.
“Somehow they can find unlimited resources to send 550 staff to Glastonbury, but they want to cut the excellent team who have won awards for their coverage of important ceremonial and key state events.”
The BBC has come under scrutiny in recent years and has been facing hard times financially. It announced plans to cut more than £500m from its annual budget, including spending £150m less on new show formats.
Matt Brittin, a former Google executive, was brought in last week as the successor to outgoing director general Tim Davie.
Buckingham Palace is also reported to be concerned about television coverage of historic royal events, according to The Telegraph.
It is understood that the axing comes just days after the team won an award for its coverage of the liberation of Auschwitz.
A BBC spokesman said: “As a prudent commercial business with a mandate to maximise returns to the BBC, we regularly look at how we’re set up and where we can work more efficiently.
“We’re proposing some changes that will help us stay strong creatively and continue to deliver a range of high-quality programmes while managing our costs in a challenging and fast-moving market.”
