Is it time for the BBC to hand over Local?

The BBC can make a decent case for seizing the opportunity within the breaks in World Cup coverage to remind people of the value of the BBC - and the case for paying the licence fee. After all, that’s the current funding mechanism.

It didn’t go unnoticed, though, that on that major linear TV spot there was no trumpeting of local radio or regional TV’s value within that high quality production

How’s that 'local' thing going overall for the BBC in England?

The answers are to be found in the latest BBC annual report, published last week. The proportion of people consuming BBC local content has fallen to a low of 43%.

In the North of England, it falls from 53% in 2022 to 44% now.

This decline, of course, was against a backdrop of a major plan to improve the BBC’s local performance.

Remember the BBC’s move to shift local budget from radio to online to reach more people, with the patronising lanyarders telling us: “Our job is not just to serve local radio listeners – it’s to serve all licence fee-payers”.

In my frosty interview in 2023 with Rhodri Talfan Davies, then BBC Director of Nations, he said he felt the changes, with serious reductions to BBC local radio provision, would improve matters: “ I believe they're gonna work….with the right presenters and the right product team.. can make them sing. But of course, I'm accountable”.

People who express concerns that people are not held to account at the BBC should be reassured that he has now indeed been moved on - to the post of BBC Deputy Director General.

I fully agree that doing local well is more than just about radio – but I am not persuaded that the BBC’s heart is in any of it and they are certainly not equipped to do it at an appropriate budget.

I know of many gifted people working at the coalface who can point to many specific examples of excellence in local content delivery, but taken as a whole, I believe the BBC fails and the figures speak for themselves. There have been numerous plans to bring together newsrooms, tackle local audio/video and online generally but they are ever-changing and I cannot see overall evidence of great strides.

Taking local radio specifically, over the last four years, overall weekly audiences are down by about a quarter – over one and a half million lost listeners - with listening by around a third. And a BBC criticised by Ofcom for not serving C2DEs well – is serving them less well.

The BBC has twice asked for reductions in its local radio commitments and I fear more requests will now follow as finances are tightened further. Yet most capable programmers could create much richer services on much less that the current budget.

In a footnote, I also believe the BBC breached its Ofcom Operating Licence in even failing to deliver the required locally-made broadcast hours quota on local radio in the year 24-25. I’d value confirmation – or otherwise. My complaint was submitted to the BBC in October 2025, before then going to Ofcom in March 2026 for initial ‘appraisal’ before investigation – a sieving process Ofcom indicates should take 15 days. It has taken four months to even be ‘appraised’ so far - and I have no recent update. It is concerning that a complaint about a publicly-funded broadcaster should, so far, have taken ten months overall – even before an investigation. BBC regulation appears unfit for purpose.

The BBC appears not to care about local – and is not its natural home. In a sense, BBC historians may suggest it never has been. Its many, many successes have often been despite the BBC, not because of it. The many triumphs are because of the energies and the gifts of the people on the ground.

I welcome the Local News Fund and suspect that money will do far more good than the equivalent sum entrusted to the BBC.

In the new BBC Licence settlement, alongside the Government’s Local Media Plan, it’s time to give Local – and the budgets for Local to a new body to operate.

In turn, the BBC could lose a few distractions, making it marginally more manageable.

And does anyone else feel that ‘It’s Our BBC’ should be ‘It’s Your BBC’?

Related posts: Research indicates scale of BBC failures