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Anxious staff at BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW) have told us of their deep concern that they have still not moved into their new £100 million headquarters two years after it was handed over and before the lockdown was imposed, The Eye can reveal.
Following the corporation taking possession of the building in Central Square, Cardiff, the Director of BBC CW, Rhodri Talfan Davies, proclaimed excitedly: “Central Square is all about opening up… the fantastic location means that we’ll be more accessible.
“As part of the drive to ‘open up’, inclusion is a key part of the design of Central Square throughout.”
But now it appears many of his staff are extremely unhappy that their own headquarters did not ‘open up’ before the lockdown.
One said earlier: “This is a complete nonsense. Two years on and we still haven’t moved down there”.
Another told The Eye: “This is just taking far too long – some of us have moved and some of us haven’t, and everyone is asking ‘when are we going to go down?’”.
Our own Editor Phil Parry worked at the present BBC CW headquarters in Llandaff for 23 years, and said: “This is an unbelievable length of time. I thought they would have been in there by now!”.
BBC CW received the keys to the new headquarters in April 2018, and staff were told it would take 18 months to fit out the building, but several months after that date passed, equipment was still in the ‘testing’ phase. Officials were unable to say when broadcasting will start and the extraordinary delay is having a severe knock-on effect for other broadcasters in Wales, such as S4C which is due to have a number of desks allocated to workers.
But executives at BBC CW still appeared to be upbeat, despite being months behind schedule.
Mr Davies told staff: “On Central Square, we are now in an intense period of testing and training – it’s a hive of activity…”.
But BBC CW have also been ‘a hive of activity’ in not providing information and controversies over them ‘opening up’ do not simply apply to their new building.
The Eye’s satirist Edwin Phillips has made fun of the situation.
Officials have clearly shown their approach in the attitude towards questions about the listening figures for BBC CW Radio Wales (BBC CW RW).
One listener was told: “We are not… obliged to supply information…”.
Officials were also not ‘opening up’ with access to Mr Davies.
Mr Parry, was told by the Press Office in a lengthy email exchange over more than six months, that Mr Davies would be available for interview. Question areas were provided, and the BBC CW official was told the interview could be conducted over the telephone. Mr Parry was then informed that an interview would not, in fact, be granted.
The relationship of the Editor of BBC CW RW Colin Paterson with television and radio presenter Lucy Owen, has caused huge disquiet among media people both within BBC CW and without.
Ms Owen has hosted a Sunday programme on BBC CW Radio Wales commissioned by Mr Paterson’s staff.
There has also been a failure to ‘open up’ about programmes which have been scrapped.
The popular TV debate series The Hour was axed after a year, and at a cost to the licence fee-payer of about a million pounds, following the controversial decision to close the 53 year-old award-winning Welsh TV Current Affairs programme Week In, Week Out (WIWO).
Yet viewers had described The Hour as “necessary” and even BBC CW officials had admitted to The Eye it “capture(d) the mood of the nation”.
Meanwhile WIWO had won a clutch of awards including at the Royal Television Society, BAFTA Cymru, the Celtic Media ceremony and BT Wales.
It even secured an award after it had been formally closed.
The programme had also been used as a springboard for Panorama episodes, and one of the journalists’ investigations still features near the top of an internal BBC CW document recording the highest viewing figures.
There has been a lack of ‘openness’ too about the fact that the political journalist Aled ap Dafydd became Plaid Cymru’s (PC’s) Director of Political Strategy and External Relations.
This came hard on the heels of the appointment of the former PC Chief Executive Rhuanedd Richards as Editor of BBC Radio Cymru (BBC RC) as well as the Welsh language online service, Cymru Fyw, and this too officials were not ‘open’ about.
So it is obvious that ‘opening up’ is difficult for BBC CW – as shown by the fact all the staff have not moved into the new headquarters, two years after the corporation took possession of it, and before the lockdown.
Phil Parry’s memories of his astonishing 36-year award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the incurable disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now! The picture doubles as a cut-and-paste poster!
If you need something to keep the children entertained during these uncertain times (in Welsh) try Ffwlbart Ffred about the amusing stories of Ffred and his pet
