The BBC’s retreat from its premises in west London has continued with an £87m deal for the sale and sublet of its Media Village site a year after it handed over the keys to the historic Television Centre.
Media Village will be renamed White City Place by its new owners Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan, with the BBC continuing to occupy three of the six buildings on the four-acre site.
It comes after the BBC was reprimanded in a National Audit Office report for not making better use of its space. It found that the cost of running its redeveloped New Broadcasting House headquarters is three times higher than the UK average and almost double that of comparable central London buildings.
Announcing the latest deal on Friday, the corporation said it would save £33m in annual running costs, part of a plan to save £75m a year in property costs by 2017.
It said it would reduce the amount of vacant space in corporation buildings from 9.3% to “as little as 2.6%”. The number of BBC buildings has been reduced from 213 to 154, the equivalent of 35 football pitches, according to the corporation.
