"The Guardian" reports that former senior BBC executive Roly Keating returned his £375,000 payoff from the corporation after parliament's spending watchdog branded the decision to award it "seriously deficient".

Keating, who was the BBC's director of archive content, left last year to become chief executive of the British Library.

The Guardian's report, including quotes from Roly's letter to DG Hall, may be found here.

"I therefore enclose with this letter a cheque payable to the BBC, amounting to the full sum I received as severance payment after tax was deducted by the BBC at source."

Meanwhile... "WDR" here, in his 'blogspot', says:-

"But still, there's always "pension augmentation". In the three years to December 2012, the BBC augmented the pensions of 38 departing senior managers at a total cost of £3.7 million. One executive editor, on mere £79k a year, got a pension pot top up of £316k - bringing the total cost of their exit deal to £474k. The departmental director, who got paid for notice despite working through it, on a healthy £300k p.a., also got £266k added to their pension pot - bringing the cost of their departure to £866k - putting them second only to Mark Byford in recent years."

Elsewhere, The "Daily Mail." has a headline:-
"BBC's shameful severance pay deals revealed: How 150 senior managers were given vast pay-offs which came in at £25MILLION".

And in "The Independent".:-
"In 14 of the 60 cases reviewed by the NAO, the BBC paid senior managers more salary in lieu of notice than would be provided by their contractual entitlement, costing licence fee payers at least £1 million. The NAO identified two cases where the BBC knew that departing senior managers had secured future employment before they had left.

The report uncovered some extraordinary payments signed off by the BBC. In one case, a departing manager was given a package of £219,000 even though this was £141,000 more than he was entitled to. The payment included £49,000 to cover training and IT equipment in order to help the individual’s future career prospects. The BBC had originally offered £30,000 but was persuaded to give an additional £19,000 to cover tax and national insurance due on the payment.

In another example, the BBC agreed to hire a departing manager as a consultant on a daily rate of £1,000 and agreed to pay a minimum of £60,000 over two years. The individual also received £145,500 redundancy payment and a £66,000 contribution to their pension pot."