BBC director general Mark Thompson said it woud be the 'last time the BBC will be able to make this level of savings without a substantial loss of services or quality or both'.
Credit: By Coffee Lover on Flickr. Some rights reserved.The BBC announced proposals which would see around 2,000 jobs cut as it attempts to make savings of around £670 million a year by 2016/17.
A public consultation was launched today by the BBC Trust after reviewing a series of proposals from BBC management, produced in response to the licence fee agreement of 2010.
According to a report outlining the measures, published today following a nine-month long consultation with staff called 'Delivering Quality First', the final number of job losses "will depend on several factors".
"The jobs will not be lost in one go but across the next five years and, as always, we will seek wherever possible to implement the reductions through turnover, redeployment and voluntary redundancy.
"These job losses are over and above any remaining post closures in the current efficiency programme".
Commenting on the plans, director general Mark Thompson said it would be the "last time the BBC will be able to make this level of savings without a substantial loss of services or quality or both."
Following the new licence fee agreement, the BBC has also taken on funding for the World Service, S4C and BBC Monitoring. Hundreds of job cuts were announced at the World Service following this agreement, and more than 50 within BBC Monitoring.
The proposals set out by the BBC executive and published today cover both the "back office functions" of the broadcaster, content and programme-making, and the "structure, genres and investment in individual channels and services".
In a statement director general Mark Thompson said: "This is a plan which puts quality and creativity first. It's a plan for a smaller BBC, but a BBC which uses its resources more effectively and collaboratively to deliver a full range of services to the public.
"The plan meets the savings target we agreed in last year's licence-fee settlement, but also identifies nearly £150m per year to invest in new high quality output and in the platforms and services of the future.
"But it is a plan which also means stretching efficiencies and significant job losses. It's my judgement that this is the last time the BBC will be able to make this level of savings without a substantial loss of services or quality or both."
Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, added that the broadcaster had "a tough and challenging new licence fee settlement" but added that "it should still be possible to run an outstanding broadcaster on £3.5bn a year".
"The Trust's view has been clear from the start of this process - the BBC must look to run itself as efficiently as possible before we consider cutting services. Over half of the savings announced today will come from changes to operations, but there will need to be some changes to services, and we now need to test BBC management's proposals for this.
"We agree with the direction that the Director-General has taken, but we want to hear what the public think, as it is ultimately their BBC."
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