The BBC has for the past decade rewarded favoured bosses with lavish receptions and leaving parties, with one executive’s farewell costing licence fee payers more than £150,000.

The most expensive send-off was for John Birt, who bowed out as director-general with a party at Hampton Court Palace, costing more than £50,000, and a studio event, hosted by Stephen Fry, costing an estimated £100,000.

His deputy, Will Wyatt, received a studio tribute, costing an estimated £50,000, with filmed contributions to the theme of the entertainment show This is Your Life.

The hidden cost of the BBC’s hospitality emerged after disgruntled staff contacted The Sunday Times to point out the gaps in its expenses declarations, made last month under freedom of information laws.

Only expenses directly incurred and claimed back by staff were disclosed: payments made on the BBC’s central booking system were exempted.

The public documents revealed that in September 2007 Jenny Abramsky, then director of BBC audio and music, organised a leaving dinner for Sir Nicholas Kenyon, the controller of the BBC Proms, which cost licence fee payers £1,406.

But the papers did not record a second leaving event, for about 200 guests in the Florence Hall of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba), because it was booked centrally.

When a Sunday Times reporter telephoned Riba he was told the hire of the room would cost £4,500. A BBC source directly involved in planning the party said food and drink cost about £30 per head, equating to a further £6,000. This weekend a BBC spokesman said the all-in cost was only £4,932.50 because the corporation had obtained a discount.

In the past year, David Thompson, the departing head of BBC films, and Jane Tranter, former controller of BBC fiction, also received glittering leaving parties.

Thompson’s leaving do was held last October at the Paramount venue near the top of the Centre Point tower, in central London. There were more than 200 guests.

A Sunday Times reporter was told by the venue that the booking fee was £5,000 and there was a minimum spend on food, drink and service of £10,000. The BBC was unable to say how much the event had cost.

Informed sources said there was disquiet about the decision to pay for Tranter’s party because she was not leaving the BBC, but simply transferring to a role in Los Angeles.

The corporation hired the grade I-listed, 18th-century House of St Barnabas in Soho, central London, for Tranter’s party last December. The venue has a library, a secret garden and a chapel.

The BBC put the guest list at 250 people, but some of those who attended said it was 500. The guests included the actor David Tennant, the 10th incarnation of Doctor Who.

Russell T Davies, the creator of the modern Doctor Who, Andrew Davies, the Bafta-winning dramatist who adapted many of the BBC’s most successful costume dramas, and Stephen Poliakoff, whose writing credits include The Lost Prince and Shooting the Past, were also there.

When The Sunday Times approached the venue, it was told that hiring the building for a day cost £5,000, with the price of food, drink and service to be added. A BBC spokesman insisted the total bill for the party was £7,000.

In its statement, it mounted a broader defence of licence fee-funded hospitality, saying it was “part and parcel of the media business”. It said: “Such events often provide an opportunity to build a wide range of contacts.”

But for whose benefit? Many of the guests at the Soho party also attended the series of events that marked the departure of John Birt, now Lord Birt, from the corporation almost a decade earlier.

Birt’s farewell began in November 1999 in the sumptuous surroundings of Hampton Court Palace. More than 150 guests from the worlds of politics, industry and entertainment gathered to enjoy a banquet and a celebration of Handel and Elgar performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Among those who attended the £50,000 event were Sir David Frost, Sir Terry Wogan, Bob Ayling, then chief executive of British Airways, Harold Pinter and Dame Judi Dench.

At the time, the BBC denied the gathering was a leaving party. It said the function was designed to update opinion formers on its programming plans for the millennium.

However, this weekend a spokesman accepted that “given the timing of this event, the opportunity was taken for this group of people to say farewell to John”.

The banquet at Hampton Court was the first in a string of elaborate gatherings for Birt. The highlight of the celebrations was the £100,000 event staged in one of the main studios at BBC Television Centre.

Stephen Fry, the actor, writer and comedian, was master of ceremonies and the comic Steve Coogan played in character as Alan Partridge.

About 300 people enjoyed wine and canapés, and were treated to a video presentation of Birt’s achievements prepared by BBC staff.

One film showed a goal scored by Birt in front of Wem-bley stadium alongside the efforts of footballers Dennis Bergkamp and Michael Owen.

There were also messages of support from John Major, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Giorgio Arma-ni and Richard Curtis.

In his 2002 autobiography, The Harder Path, Birt recalled how he was given a “splendid send-off” by Sir Christopher Bland, then chairman of the BBC governors, “who took enormous care over the arrangements”. Birt described the event as a “high-quality production in a large studio”.

A BBC spokesman insisted the send-off “did not cost anywhere near £100,000”, but a former executive involved in arranging the event said the studio rental alone was likely to have cost £20,000.

Birt introduced an internal market at the BBC, whereby a cash price was put on every service, yet a spokesman said the BBC would not class the cost of using internal hospitality or studios as actual expenditure because the money had not left the BBC.

On his last day at the corporation, Birt gathered a group of his closest friends and colleagues to witness the unveiling of a portrait of him by Tai-Shan Schierenberg. The painting is believed to have cost £20,000.

Bland said he did not know the cost of the studio event because it had been paid for centrally by the BBC.

He added: “I can say it didn’t feel disproportionate at the time. We live in a different environment now. What was appropriate 10 or 20 years ago would not be appropriate now.”

A BBC spokesman said: “We have cut back dramatically on all events, including leaving parties. Such events are now rare and of a modest nature with a limit of £20 per head.”

However, one senior BBC executive predicted that the embarrassment caused by the freedom of information declarations would simply lead his colleagues to conceal their expenditure from public gaze.

“What you have seen this time round is the stuff which we ended up putting on our credit cards. I can’t see people getting caught out again. In future, everything will go the corporate route. All spending will go underground.”

Additional reporting: Simon Trump

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