[House]

Worth remembering no employment decisions (e.g. reinstatement, redundancy or redeployment) were likely until the review of the original decision had concluded, else they BBC would be in hot water in any subsequent employment tribunal claim for preempting their HR complaints and appeals process. Now that review has concluded, I suspect they’ll be keen to resolve this one way or another very quickly.

That said, it’s a tricky situation. If they reinstate all five at full pay as chief presenters, you potentially invite criticism for doing so without a fair and open recruitment process (given other previous presenters have left the channel entirely after not securing one of the five roles). Do they then get priority over the appointed presenter-correspondents in slots, airtime etc.?

If you appoint them as presenter-correspondents but maintain their legacy salaries, there’s potential for a discrimination claim from the other presenter-correspondents (think along the similar lines of Carrie Gracie and Samira Ahmed’s tribunal wins that they were unlawfully underpaid compared to comparable presenters).

And if the five affected staff members won’t take pay cuts or demotions, as Deadline suggests is the case, it’s either a costly redundancy package with the associated bad PR, or finding the budget and role for them to be redeployed to equivalent positions in the BBC.

No easy answers, I suspect.