At his regular monthly Leadership Breakfast on 10 March, Mark Thompson told the BBC's senior managers that the first round of savings, from Professional Services, will yield £139m by 2008.

Professional Services divisions later confirmed this to their staff and outlined some of the detail of how these savings would be made in those divisions.

In total it means the BBC now expects to realise £355m back into programmes and services, £35m more than Mark in his speech to staff on 7 December 2004.

The savings are part of Mark's ambition to ensure the BBC meets rapidly changing audience expectations by developing a bold content strategy, transforming itself into a state-of-the-art digital broadcaster and becoming much simpler in its operations and business processes.

On average across the Professional Services there will be some 46% reduction in headcount around 980 posts will close, some through staff turnover, others through redundancy and some 750 posts are planned to be outsourced.

The BBC Governors have endorsed these plans and will consider these and further savings plans from the content and output divisions as a whole at their meeting on 17 March, before giving final approvals.

Mark said "In December I talked about the creative prize for the BBC and our audiences but the cost is nothing short of transformation.

We have made a strong start, showing we are serious about change and ensuring we are maximising the value of our income for audiences' benefit.

We need to make the BBC a simpler, more agile operation, ready to take the creative lead in a very different, very challenging digital future."

The announcements came a week after publication of the Government's Green Paper on the BBC's Charter, which Secretary of State Tessa Jowell described as a "blueprint for a strong, independent BBC".