The BBC beyond London

Summary

Giving evidence to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee this July, Lisa Nandy said she wants BBC commissioning devolved out of Broadcasting House, with the corporation’s centre of gravity shifting north.

Moving commissioners out of London sounds like an easy way to do that. It isn’t. A relocated commissioner is a handful of salaries, not a production hub. Either they stay free to commission from anywhere, so the money never actually settles near their desk, or they’re ringfenced to their own patch, recreating a thinner version of the old ITV regional franchise system. That system can’t be rebuilt. The industry has consolidated around giants like Comcast and Netflix, who have no incentive to operate fifteen separate regional hubs.

That doesn’t mean the impulse is wrong. Rather, Charter review should encourage practical changes that ensure the BBC delivers for audiences and creatives across the UK, without spreading it ever more thinly.

Key Points

Moving commissioners doesn’t fix anything
Free to commission anywhere, or ringfenced to one region – neither option changes where the jobs and budgets actually land.

BBC North shows what genuine devolution looks like
Salford worked because whole self-commissioning divisions moved with their own budgets, not a rebadged office. £224m cost, around 1,500 posts moved, a local economic multiplier that grew from 0.34 to 0.55 by 2017.

Production, not commissioning, is where the jobs sit
The BBC now has major hubs in seven UK locations. More than half its direct economic contribution already lands outside London, against a sector average of one fifth.

Local presence is the highest-leverage fix
Reimagining local, where news has hollowed out fastest, does more for representation than relocating a national commissioner ever could.

It needs funding, not just goodwill
Fifteen years of licence fee freezes and real-terms cuts are the actual constraint on doing any of this at scale. The licence fee mustn’t be cut as part of any wider Charter settlement.

Our full paper sets out the alternatives that would actually work: co-commissioning between the nations and the network, deliberate scheduling, vocational access schemes, and targeted regional top-up funds like NESIP.