Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman has cast his legendary inquisitory gaze over the sale of the iconic Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush, west London, asking rhetorically, "What organisation would move from cheap square footage in west London to Oxford Circus?" A pointed criticism of the BBC's move to relocate some staff to central London as part of a programme of budget cuts. Paxman, 61, compared the broadcaster, his employers, which has announced plans to vacate the famous doughnut-shaped TV Centre by 2015, to the British Empire, before de-colonisation. The Presenter is famous for his no-nonsense and acerbic style when grilling government officials on the BBC2 flagship news programme. Many media observers are not surprised he has turned his ire on his employers.

He told the Radio Times: "They always said that the way you know if the British are going to de-colonise is when they start building massive government buildings - that was certainly the case in India. And the BBC's much the same. What organisation - at a time when it has no money, allegedly - would move from cheap square footage in west London to Oxford Circus?"

The BBC announced in 2007 its intention to sell Television Centre, the landmark Shepherd's Bush home of BBC television and news which opened in 1960, to maximise the site's value to the BBC and licence fee payers. Staff are moving to the revamped Broadcasting House in central London and its new BBC North headquarters in Salford. The move generated an unprecedented Twitter storm when it was announced with many lamenting the decision.

Paxman, who presented a series on the British Empire on BBC1, described the BBC as one of the legacies of Empire, along with sport, religion and the prevalence of the English language. A BBC spokesman defended the relocation of staff, saying: "We are surprised that Jeremy did not know that the move to Broadcasting House will save the BBC more than £700 million.

"The BBC is reducing the size of its estate and Broadcasting House will become the primary BBC site in London and for the first time in the BBC's history, key network and global services in television, radio, news and online will work together on one site."