New figures show that the BBC spent £276,833,465 in redundancy payments in the past seven years.
A Freedom of Information request by the Guardian reveals that nearly 6,000 BBC staff took an average of £46,200 between March 2005 and February 2012, with the highest-paid member of staff, who the BBC refused to name, receiving £949,000. The same amount was paid to the former deputy director general Mark Byford, who left in June last year.
£66.4m was paid out between March 2011 and February 2012 alone. The redundancies were both compulsory and voluntary.
A statement from the BBC said: "Since 2005, the BBC has made significant reductions in its headcount as part of overall efficiency savings. While this has necessitated some one-off redundancy costs, this is outweighed by the cumulative savings achieved over this period of £2.7bn."
Delivering Quality First, the BBC's cost-cutting initiative, will lead to several thousand more redundancies.