The Hampshire-based deputy director general of the BBC is to leave his post next year as a cost-cutting mission gets under way, the corporation is expected to announce.

Mark Byford, who lives in Winchester and in 2009/10 earned an annual salary of £475,000, will leave next year and the post of deputy director general will be axed, sources have said.

Further cuts are expected to be announced later this week.

Members of the corporation's 10-strong executive board, which includes director general Mark Thompson, chief operating officer Caroline Thompson and Peter Salmon, director of BBC North - are also under threat.

The BBC declined to comment on the matter last night.

Mr Thompson previously warned of a cull in senior management. Speaking in August, he told the audience at his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in Edinburgh that the number of senior managers at the corporation would be reduced by at least a fifth by the end of 2011.

He also said the senior management payroll would fall by at least a quarter, adding: ''If we can go further, we will and we will look for reductions at every level in the organisation up to and including the executive board.''

Mr Byford joined the corporation in 1979 aged 20, working as a researcher in his local television newsroom in Leeds.

He became deputy director general in January 2004 but within three weeks of his appointment Greg Dyke resigned as head of the BBC.

Mr Byford took on the position of acting director general for five months until Mr Thompson was appointed to the role.

He is also chairman of the BBC's journalism board, and is responsible for editorial policy and planning coverage of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Expenses claims released in July showed that Mr Byford spent almost £5,000 flying to South Africa for a World Cup Final visit.

The BBC said the executive also used the trip to hold meetings with bodies such as Fifa, which invited him, as well as visiting news bureaux in the region.

Former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland described Mr Byford as ''the best director-general the BBC never had''.

Sir Christopher said: ''He was a real force. He reorganised the World Service and changed it from being a foreign legion outpost into being properly and appropriately integrated into the BBC.

''He stood in as acting director-general when a supine board of governors lost both their chairman and (director-general) Greg Dyke.

''If anybody deserves an honourable retirement, it is Mark Byford.''