The BBC has pledged to relocate 400 jobs outside London, as it faces a battle to secure a future funding settlement from a government that wants to redistribute spending around of the UK.
The corporation’s director general, Tim Davie, announced the changes to staff on Thursday morning, saying the corporation had to prove its value to audiences across the UK by producing programmes closer to where they lived and spending more money outside the capital.
Among the changes are:
Specialist journalism teams covering topics such as the environment, technology, and education, will be relocated from London to new bases in Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow, and Birmingham.
Daytime programmes on Radio 1, Radio 2, and 1Xtra will be hosted from elsewhere in the UK.
The BBC will launch two new long-running drama series to represent life outside the capital, one set in the north of England and one in a devolved nation.
Radio 3’s leadership team will move to Salford, with some of 6Music’s staff to follow, although both stations will retain a major London presence.
A third of Radio 4’s Today programme episodes will be co-presented from outside London, with Newsnight and Radio 4’s PM also moved outside the capital on a regular basis.
The corporation has pledged to increase the proportion of its television budget spent outside London from 50% to 60% by 2028.
One of the biggest challenges for the BBC will be convincing existing big-name presenters and top executives to move to the new locations, rather than simply commuting from London. The BBC confirmed that all of the corporation’s existing London-based executive board members are expected to remain based in the capital.
The jobs announcements have already been welcomed by regional leaders and the government. However, staff on many of the affected London-based teams told the Guardian they expected the vast majority of their colleagues to quit rather than uproot their families and relocate elsewhere in the country.
Prominent BBC journalists, such as the long-serving technology editor Rory Cellan-Jones, who has raised concerns about his team relocating to Glasgow, may now choose to leave the organisation.
There was also open anger on a call with head of news Fran Unsworth, who told BBC journalists that too many live in expensive areas of London such as Wandsworth and Richmond.
“There are plenty of people who can’t afford to commute in from Zone 6 and it’s not a very nice journey anyway,” she told journalists whose jobs were moving across the country, suggesting Glasgow could be a better option.
One Radio 1 Newsbeat reporter who is facing their job moving to Birmingham spoke bluntly of their dismay on a meeting with news bosses, who are remaining in London: “Good luck trying to get young, exciting journalists to move to Digbeth.”
In total about 200 existing BBC news jobs will be relocated, alongside a similar number of roles in other parts of the BBC’s output. The corporation also aims to create an extra 600 new roles based outside London over the next seven years, at a time when it is trying to reduce the size of its 23,000-strong overall workforce.
The BBC claimed the announcement, including moving more television commissioning outside the capital, will mean a cumulative £700m of extra spending shifting outside London over the next six years.
Davie told staff the “jeopardy for the BBC remains high” due to the challenge from tech companies but it had a “strong argument” to take to the government as it begins negotiations over the amount it can charge for the licence fee between 2022 and 2027.
As part of the proposals the BBC’s concert orchestra will be relocated to an as yet undecided location outside London, while more Proms concerts will be hosted outside the capital. Some of the changes are more cosmetic: although shows such as Today, Newsnight, and PM will be increasingly hosted from studios outside the capital, their production teams will remain based in London.
The BBC has also promised to hire 100 digital news reporters to boost its regional news coverage, with many based in towns in the Midlands and northern England where local news coverage is deemed to be failing. This is despite the corporation recently making deep cuts to its existing regional news output.
Some tweaks will be made to regional output, with BBC One viewers in Yorkshire, the north-west and north-east of England hearing regional voices making continuity announcements, while there will be new peak-time local radio stations in Bradford, Sunderland and Wolverhampton.
