BBC chiefs went over budget on their website by £36million of licence payers’ cash, figures revealed yesterday.

They poured £110million into bbc.co.uk – 48 per cent more than a planned £74.2million.

The huge overspend for 2007/08 was uncovered by the Beeb’s governing body, which yesterday blasted the “lack of financial accountability”.

A report by the BBC Trust said: “Management control of bbc.co.uk is not sufficiently strong at present.

“Financial oversight has not been sufficiently effective.

“The true level of spending has only become known as a result of this review and, at £110million, is much higher than permitted.”

But hey BBC, it's licence payers money so who cares?

OOPS again Aunty

Looks to me like the sole purpose of this report is about imposing tighter controls on the BBC website "to prevent it stifling commercial rivals".

Not convinced by the numbers (all suspiciously precise - why '74.2', '81.6' and '24.9'?). We all know accountancy is a creative discipline, and that you can get the figures to prove anything if you have an axe to grind.

After all, lobbying from commercial rivals managed to kill off BBC Jam. This strategy also explains why, for the first time since the 1930s, the BBC produces no schools programming, either on radio or tv. I suppose this time commercial lobbyists will be wanting Radio 2 privatised, or some other goodies to be given out.