'Here we go again': Inside the BBC saving cuts and what it really means for UK audiences

When the BBC announced its latest cuts, I was neither surprised nor shocked. Having worked in BBC Local Radio for over 25 years, and served as a full-time union rep across the Nations and Regions, cuts were something we had all come to expect.

As this week’s Radio Times – devoted to readers’ views on what they want from the BBC – shows, the audience still greatly value local and regional news content, so it’s a worrying time for my former colleagues, and many wonder just how much more can be cut.

Local and regional news isn’t just something that’s “nice to have”; it’s the engine room of the BBC’s presence in communities right across the UK. Many would argue it’s already been cut to the bone.

In 2020, some 450 jobs were lost in Nations and Regions. Viewers will have noticed some of the obvious changes – one presenter instead of two for the 6:30pm news on BBC One, for example. But entire parts of the output also disappeared forever.

Inside Out was the flagship regional current affairs programme, often breaking nationally significant stories such as appalling working conditions in supply warehouses, scandals in the pharmaceutical sector and much more. We were told it had run its course and was losing viewers; yet it was scheduled up against Coronation Street on ITV, and in that context, held its own.

Yes, tough decisions need to be made, but some of the more recent ones rather look like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

In 2023 BBC Local announced a new strategy, aligned with Tim Davie’s vision of “digital first”. There’d be a huge increase in digital content and new journalists to go with it. But it was paid for by cutting large parts of Local Radio.

While local news bulletins remain, in some parts of the country you can be without uniquely local content from 2pm on a Friday until 6am the following Monday, not including sports output.

So while audiences can now get more news online, they’ve fewer opportunities to participate on air. Much-loved personalities like Radio Merseyside’s Linda McDermott and Radio Devon’s David FitzGerald lost out in a fairly brutal selection process for presenters.

The new DG Matt Brittin has also announced cuts to commissioning, which could have consequences for local content. Local Radio has been responsible for developing some of the BBC’s most popular podcasts in recent years.

Andy Whittaker’s Bodies in the Garden was one of the first to be made by BBC Local, and has been followed up by numerous other, enormously popular podcasts in the true crime genre. Those kinds of innovative commissions may now become rarer.

What concerns many journalists the most is the ability to react to breaking news. With shared afternoon programmes in many parts of BBC Local Radio, there is less flexibility to respond to developing events.

When Paul Doyle drove into the crowd celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League victory, it was Radio Merseyside’s sports team who stayed on the air into the evening to update listeners on the horrific events. Cutting parts of the local output, programme by programme, risks losing that kind of vital output.

And it is during those times of crisis that people turn to BBC Local Radio and their regional TV shows the most. Audiences rightly want to have familiar voices and faces guiding them through often-horrific details of what is known so far, and then reflecting on the subsequent investigations and court cases. That sense of human connection is difficult to replicate via a digital news feed.

The BBC has recently spent an enormous amount of time promoting programmes that are produced across the UK. The “Made of Here” campaign rightly highlights the brilliant Blue Lights made in Belfast and Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams based in Lancashire.

Many of my old colleagues wonder why there was no similar fanfare for BBC Radio Lancashire in those trails. Is BBC Radio Somerset not “Made of Taunton”? Surely Look East is “Made of Norwich” (and so many other places in the region). It’s no wonder some of those colleagues feel rather undervalued.

As it heads towards the even more controversial matter of charter renewal, the BBC is indeed facing tough financial choices. Having eventually been part of the ongoing cuts at the end of last year, I would humbly suggest to Matt Brittin that you can’t slice the salami any thinner.

BBC Local – and its counterparts in the Nations – provide real value to public service broadcasting. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Read more:

• Is it your BBC? Radio Times readers reveal their thoughts on the public broadcaster – and why most call for its survival
• Simon Schama: “Someone should be shouting out loud about how great the BBC is”
• Emily Maitlis: “I don’t see what protection a charter really gives the BBC”
• I used to be BBC One controller and these are 10 things the BBC must now do to survive

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