After the BBC spent £1bn on redeveloping and building New Broadcasting House the corporation could be forgiven for thinking there would be few problems with its high-tech new central London headquarters.
So staff were understandably alarmed when a crack appeared recently in the basement of the building – which houses the giant BBC newsroom – and water started seeping in.
The crack is understood to have been in the concrete casing which surrounds the cavernous basement, and it meant that unpleasant smelling ground water from outside entered the building.
Builders from the same firm that built NBH have been called in to look at the problem and make repairs.
The defect is a surprise as when the building was being constructed a leaflet explained that it would have 6,500 tonnes of concrete reinforcement and that the weight was “the equivalent of 2,200 elephants.”
A BBC spokesman explained: “A minor defect allowed some external ground water to enter the building. The matter has been dealt with and routine checks have since ensured this issue hasn’t reoccurred.”
As with most residential basements that suffer problems after construction, the building company covered the repair bill, so there was no additional cost to the licence fee payer.
But it is another blow to BBC New Broadcasting House in a week in which it was criticised by some staff for the lack of working loos.
In a letter to the BBC’s in-house magazine Ariel, BBC Radio’s head of technology, Rupert Brun, said: “I’ve just had to try seven toilets across three floors of Broadcasting House before finding one that was actually available for me to use.”
“I know this would cost a bit and take several months to implement, but given that the time taken to repair a toilet such as the gents on the fourth floor of BH seems to be around four months, the project would still be worth doing. I can only guess that those in charge of such things don’t give a s***, but for the rest of us it’s getting uncomfortable.”
He went on to say it was, “actually quicker to pop out to the Yorkshire Grey” a nearby pub to “buy a pint and use their toilet than to find a working one in BH”.
Andy Baker, in charge of the building’s management, said any building housing so many staff would encounter problems.
He told Ariel: “Like any workplace of this size, there will occasionally be problems that need resolving, but the overwhelming feedback we receive is that New Broadcasting House is a great place to work and we don’t recognise the picture being painted.
The building – which opened for business two and a half years ago – also came in for some flack last month by the National Audit Office for the amount it costs to run.
However, NBH was one of the most complex building projects undertaken by the corporation and some teething problems might be expected, particularly as the corporation has had to adapt to more staff being moved into the building than originally predicted – a predicament highlighted in BBC2 satire W1A when staff are shown struggling to find desks.
It is not known what the cause of the crack in the basement was. There has been speculation about the giant hidden springs that were put underneath the building to dampen noise from the tube, so transmission of programmes would not be affected. However the problems could just be due to the building settling down after construction.
The project was lengthy and tricky for the builders. It involved excavating a basement the size of 40 Olympic swimming pools and bringing in 2,000 tonnes of steel to a site just off busy Regent Street, while keeping radio programmes on air.
