A worker for the BBC who claimed she was bullied after blowing the whistle on a £250,000 redundancy payout for a senior manager, who was just eight months from retirement was given £30,000 by the Corporation for dropping her claim.
Human resources and development manager Indira Histon, 34, claimed that in August last year senior staff members had asked her to develop a "creative" payoff for Ms Lynas, a senior manager who was due to retire in June this year. She was asked to lie to BBC lawyers so that Ms Lynas, who had taken voluntary redundancy, would receive a pay out of £257,000.
"This was a very large payoff and was likely to be scrutinised by BBC management," Ms Histon explained. "The team and I were shocked by the suggestion that we would pay this amount of money to an individual, particularly as we believed the payoff was excessive for a management interest termination and amounted to a misuse of licence payers' money."
In reply, the BBC argued that its senior executives "considered that there was a business case for not imposing the limit of 12 months' pay, which was usually applied by the BBC to compromise agreements in cases of consensual termination".
Ms Histon, who earned £60,000 a year in her position at the Television Centre in Wood Lane, withdrew her tribunal claim after a settlement was made. The BBC has indicated that she will be leaving her position soon.
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