Last updated August 2004
Printable version

BBC Nations & Regions is the largest regional broadcasting operation in the UK- accounting for more than £550m of BBC expenditure and employing nearly 7,000 staff across the UK.

Around 70 per cent of all the BBC's domestic TV and Radio output is made in the English Regions, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In the past three years, the BBC has invested an additional £50m a year in strengthening local programmes across the Nations & Regions.

Our teams are based across the length and breadth of the UK in more than 50 main centres. Including local news bureaux, we have more than 100 operational bases across the country.

The BBC is committed to making broadly one-third of all its television and radio network programmes outside London and the South East.

Network production from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has increased by more than 30 per cent over the past three years.

BBC ONE's 6.30pm regional news is the most popular news slot – national or local – on British television, watched by an average of around six million people every day.

The BBC's 40 local radio stations across England and six dedicated radio services for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - including Radio Cymru in Welsh and Radio nan Gaidheal in Gaelic - attract more than 10.5 million regular listeners.

The BBC now operates 55 local Where I Live websites across the UK. Almost eight million people now use our Where I Live sites each month and monthly page impressions have grown in the past year from 46 million to nearly 100 million.

Local BBC Multi-media Open Centres promoting learning, creative and IT skills are now operating in Lancashire, Sheffield, Merseyside, Stoke, Hull and Gloucester plus touring buses offering similar facilities with added broadcasting equipment in 10 local radio areas.

Similar facilities have been set up with a bus in Northern Ireland and two community studios and a bus in Wales.

In Building Public Value the BBC has committed itself to increasing total spend in the Nations and Regions to more than £1bn a year in the next Charter period - an increase of more than 35 per cent.