The BBC's chief technology officer was sacked weeks after being suspended over the multimillion-pound failure of an ambitious IT project, it has been revealed.

John Linwood was suspended in May when the BBC launched a review into how the bill for the failing Digital Media Initiative (DMI), an attempt to create a digital production system and archive, had come to £98.4 million.

A BBC spokesman said: "We can confirm that John Linwood is no longer employed by the BBC."

He added that Mr Linwood, who earned £280,000 a year, left the corporation in July when his contract was ended and did not receive a pay-off.

Director-general Tony Hall announced DMI was being scrapped only weeks after he took over the top job at the BBC. He said that to continue it would be ''throwing good money after bad''.

He said it had "wasted a huge amount of licence fee-payers' money" and added that he "saw no reason to allow that to continue".

A report into the project by PricewaterhouseCoopers was published last month and found that key controls on the project were ''not fit for purpose''.