Blog: BBC investigation concludes ‘systemic failure’ at BBC local radio

“As unrest hit UK streets last August, citizens were worried. Certain cities hit flashpoint.

That’s when local media comes into its own – informing, questioning and reassuring. No medium is better at the latter than radio where the human voice places context around turmoil and put its arm around the listener.

It’s a role BBC local radio has played excellently for many years.

In April 2023, Ofcom acceded to the BBC’s disingenuous request for a revised BBC Operating Licence to permit more local radio networking. Since then, the BBC has regionalised much local output and shunted out many seasoned broadcasters. Experienced people who knew their patches, knew their audiences, knew their journalism and could command their cities in difficult times.

The BBC however, assured Ofcom, that in times of significant local stories, the stations would still respond and provide an appropriate local service.

On several occasions in the last year, the BBC has failed. It certainly failed at BBC Devon on the night of the violent summer clashes.

That is the Finding (18th December 2024) of a BBC investigation by its Executive Complaints Unit, following a complaint from me.

In that December Finding, Complaints Director Jonathan Greenwood states:

“I have to infer from my investigations that there were elements of systemic failure on the night of 5 August because the staff on duty did not respond adequately to this significant breaking news either due to a lack of training or clear enough instruction.”

The case indicates that the BBC was not honest when it sought regulatory permission from Ofcom to implement its local radio changes. At that time (16th March ‘23), Ofcom wrote: “The BBC has told us (Ofcom) that it expects that major local incidents or breaking local news stories are likely to be of interest within a shared area and so would feature very prominently within shared programmes. As such, the BBC does not expect it would need to routinely scale up its operations to deliver dedicated programming to deal with such events, but it could do so where exceptional circumstances require this”.

The BBC’s December Finding, however, concluded: “Reviewing the output of BBC Radio Devon from 6pm that evening, this “prominent” featuring of breaking news within shared programmes clearly did not happen.  “…there was little sense of what was happening and little evidence of the BBC having a presence on the scene. “…Radio Devon listeners would have had no sense through the evening that the station had a reporter at or near where the trouble was taking place.”

“BBC Radio Devon’s management recognise that the story should have been covered better and there is an acknowledgement that the resources and response required on this occasion were underestimated.”

This a damning yet refreshingly sensible analysis by the BBC Executive Complaints Unit about local radio’s shortcomings in this case – and, I would suggest, several similar cases about which I have registered concerns.

I stress this post is not a criticism of the hard-working, long-suffering staff on the ground at that or any BBC local station. You do your best work and some fine work, even around this very event, but I know what it’s like to be caught up in BBC management madness. I know many of those who work in BBC local radio are as frustrated as am I.

It might be argued that the era of local radio playing a role at times like this is gone.  I’d suggest you don’t understand how some listeners – particularly older ones – still regard radio. Furthermore, that’s not the point here.  If the BBC feels that there is no longer a case for local radio, it should say so, not mislead audiences and the regulator.

BBC local radio in England has lost almost a third of its listeners in three years (Rajar: BBC Radio- England Q3 21-Q3 24). 

In general terms, in failing to understand the rudiments of radio programming and failing to deliver a listener-focused high-quality service, it has driven away audiences. Never before have so few listeners tuned in quite so disloyally.

At a time when Ofcom is calling for the BBC to serve audiences in the C2DE social groups better, particularly DE, the BBC has chosen to engineer the serious erosion of the radio network which attracted the highest proportion of them.

In the last three years alone BBC local radio has lost over a third of the DE listeners it enjoyed.

The data and the detail clearly indicate that it is providing less public service, less distinctive output – at a greater cost per listening hour. Accordingly, in local radio, the BBC is simply not pursuing its Mission or meeting its Public Purposes.

There are people at the BBC who agree. It is simply not delivering local radio value in the way that sensible people owning that budget and that responsibility could. This is not about cuts, it’s about poor programming nous and utter inefficiency.

Worryingly, however, I am told that this highly critical and very illustrative BBC verdict will not be published by the BBC.  Hence this blog post.

The privileged and byzantine BBC Complaints Process, which demands persistent almost obsessive effort from complainants before anything is taken seriously would have allowed this failure to go unnoticed.

If a community or commercial station errs in the most minor way on a single occasion, its error is publicised routinely by the regulator. But when the Nation’s public service broadcaster concedes it has presided over a systemic failure within a network on which many vulnerable listeners depend – costing £120m of public money – it need not tell a soul.

I believe in the BBC. I really wish it to continue and be appropriately funded to do the job. I fear its worst enemy is within.”