45% of staff (234 individuals) between the pay grades 2 and 7 said yes to the move, mimicking the earlier proportion of senior staff that agreed to relocate. While good news for the BBC in terms of the positive response rate, it is perhaps better news for the regional media community as some 800 'vacant' roles now need to be filled.

MediaCityUK: vacancies

This led BBC North chief operating officer Richard Deverell to state that "the leadership team is delighted with the number and calibre of staff from across the moving departments," although he added that "(we) appreciate that the move is not right for everyone."

Rough calculations would suggest that the number of staff the move 'is not right for' comes in at about 800, meaning a wealth of opportunities lie ahead within the BBC's new MediaCityUK home.

Of this Deverell commented: "Now the main part of the internal decision-making is complete, we will begin the next stage of the process which will involve a significant recruitment exercise as well as working hard on the redeployment of those staff who aren't moving to BBC North."

However, in a statement from the institution it was also noted that "already nearly 1,000 staff from across the BBC, whose roles are not moving to BBC North, have expressed interest in the move" - although it appears as though 'expressing interest' translates to registering for information via the staff intranet, rather than anything more concrete.

In total, five departments and 1,500 positions are moving from the capital to Salford, along with 800 staff from the BBC's current base in Manchester.

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Comments (6)

4  By t , on 07-10-2009 16:07 Hm, good news I guess - but I'm not sure how happy I am about the imminent influx of Londoners Report