The Secretary of State meets regularly with the BBC to discuss a wide range of issues.

The Royal Charter places obligations on the BBC to observe high standards of openness and seek to maximise transparency and accountability. It also requires the BBC to report a range of information in its annual plan and its annual report and accounts, including how it ensures provision for the United Kingdom’s nations and regions.

The government launched the BBC Charter Review last year. The Green Paper set out our ambition for the BBC to tell a unifying national story that represents all communities across the UK, and to drive growth in the nations and regions. It also set out proposals for enhancing transparency in a way that supports wider public trust in the content and services the BBC delivers. We are looking at a range of options to deliver this, which include further obligations relating to programme making and spend outside of London.

Under its current Charter, the BBC has an obligation to ‘reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions’. Ofcom sets specific obligations for the BBC on programme making in the nations and regions including requiring that at least 50% of network TV programme hours and production spend must be made outside the M25, and 30% of relevant radio spend outside the M25. The BBC is operationally and editorially independent of the Government in determining how it meets its obligations, and it is subsequently for the independent regulator Ofcom to hold the BBC to account in meeting those obligations. BBC reporting shows it is consistently meeting or exceeding these quotas.

The Secretary of State does not have specific plans to discuss this issue with the Director General. However, as part of the next Charter Review, the Government will engage with the BBC and others to consider how to ensure the BBC truly represents and delivers for every person in this country including to be more ambitious in growing our world-leading TV sector outside of London and the South East, and to commission content in every part of the country.

The BBC regional channels have been restored.

The Bloomberg channel currently has no sound. This is awaiting parts and is expected to be restored by mid-July.

Problems with tuning of televisions should be reported to the Parliamentary maintenance helpdesk.

BBC regional channels are now only transmitted in High Definition (HD) after Standard Definition (SD) transmission was withdrawn in February. Work to update the television system on the Parliamentary Estate to allow for the transmission of additional HD channels is planned for Easter and will restore access to BBC Regional Channels.

Ofcom has recently completed its fourth round of community radio licensing and awarded 24 licences to new community stations between November 2019 and April 2020. A total of 302 community radio stations are currently on air across the UK.

During 2019, Ofcom also agreed to improve the quality of the coverage of 63 community radio stations, and extend the coverage of 33, enabling community radio to reach a wider audience than ever.

Decisions on whether to offer new FM community radio licences are a matter for Ofcom to determine.

The new Charter requires the BBC to better reflect, represent and serve all of the UK’s nations and regions. The new public purposes make clear that the BBC should ensure it provides content and services that meet the needs of the UK’s nations, regions and communities.

The specific content of regional programming is, however, an editorial matter for the BBC and there is a long-standing principle that the Government does not interfere in programme matters.

As part of our Local TV licencing programme, Ofcom advertised the following locations with a deadline of 7 January 2014: Barnstaple, Basingstoke, Derry/Londonderry, Gloucester, Guildford, Limavady, Luton, Maidstone, Plymouth, Reading and Salisbury and Ofcom is in the process of considering the resulting applications. Out of these locations, Ofcom only received applications for five: Reading, Basingstoke, Guildford, Salisbury and Maidstone. The licences for Reading, Salisbury and Guildford have been awarded by Ofcom (on 3 June 2014) and Ofcom expects to be able to make a decision on the remaining two locations, namely Basingstoke and Maidstone shortly.

Ofcom plans to invite applications for further areas later this year.