BBC Trust

Summary

This report presents the findings of our service review of BBC Local Radio and local news and current affairs in England.

Our review, announced in July 2015, considered:

• How well the BBC serves audiences with local radio and local news and current affairs in England
• How well BBC Local Radio and local news and current affairs in England is performing against commitments set out in services licences
• How well-positioned BBC Local Radio and local news and current affairs in England is to deliver its service licence commitments in the future
• Whether the service licences should be changed.

We carried out a public consultation at the end of 2015 and received around 3,000 responses from licence fee payers. We received a number of responses from the industry, other stakeholder organisations and the Trust’s Audience Council for England. We also commissioned quantitative and qualitative audience research to inform the review, and we visited 13 BBC Local and Regional locations across England and interviewed members of BBC staff. This evidence, alongside performance monitoring and financial analysis, has given us a clear picture of these services.

A summary of our findings, together with the full report and the supporting evidence for this review, can be found below.

Key findings

The review has found that the BBC’s local radio and news and current affairs services are a very important part of the BBC’s overall news and radio offer to licence fee payers in England. They deliver the BBC’s public purposes to a large number of people who value the services and see them as high-quality, informative and trustworthy.

The BBC’s local and regional output is part of a broader local media market across the UK, including commercial radio, local and regional press, and local and regional TV. We have found that the BBC services play a different role to commercial and other local media, and we consider that BBC Local Radio and regional current affairs are unique within UK public service broadcasting.

We have developed three action points which we are asking the BBC to take forward as a result of this review:

• The BBC should continue to improve how it explains local political and policy issues and holds decision-makers to account.
• The BBC should improve its local web pages in order to meet audience expectations. The Trust is clear that the BBC must continue to work collaboratively with other local news providers and is mindful of its impact on the market.
• Use of the BBC’s local and regional TV and radio services is much lower than average among black, Asian and minority ethnic audiences. It is important that the BBC improves the appeal of its regional and local content to a wider range of audiences, particularly black, Asians and minority ethnic adults.

Summary report

Full report

Public consultation report

Quantitative audience research report

Qualitative audience research report

Performance analysis

Responses from organisations

Responses from Audience Councils

Equality analysis