Redundancies looming at BBC Radio Northampton amid big regional changes for the corporation

BBC Radio Northampton journalists and producers are among those that may lose their jobs as part of a raft of changes to the corporation's regional output.

A shake-up of daily radio programming at the station - which covers the whole county of Northamptonshire - is on the cards, with the temporary axing of one show per day during the Covid-19 pandemic now set to be made permanent.

The BBC One Inside Out East regional TV programme has also been scrapped to make way for a half-hour BBC One national investigative journalism programme.

The organisation has said that, in order to make savings of £25m, it will have to make 450 of its 3,000 regional staff redundant.

The Northants Telegraph understands that, in an announcement to all staff at BBC Radio Northampton yesterday (Thursday, July 2), all journalists and producers were offered the chance to take voluntary redundancy. No management positions at the Abington Street station are thought to be under threat.

During the coronavirus epidemic BBC Radio Northampton has had one less show per day - with other shows being lengthened to make up the shortfall. The new format, which has been adopted as standard across all BBC local radio stations, will now continue.

It is understood that all presenters at the station have also been offered the chance to take redundancy so the names of those fronting the new schedule have not yet been cemented, although it now looks inevitable that there will be some re-jigging of the presenting slots.

Late shows will now be produced centrally and go out across England on weekdays and weekends, and there will be a regional Sunday evening show.

It is believed that the corporation hopes redundancies at BBC Northampton will be 'minimal' and that no compulsory redundancies will have to be made. Staff will also be offered the chance to relocate should there be a disparity in the number of people wanting to take redundancy at the BBC's 39 different local radio stations.

Helen Thomas, the Director of BBC England, said: “I’m proud people have turned to us for trusted news and information in huge numbers during COVID-19, proving the importance of our local and regional services. But those services were created more than 50 years ago, have changed very little and need significant reinvention. That has meant taking some difficult decisions.

“We are in the age of the Facebook community group and the WhatsApp neighbourhood chat. We must adapt to better reflect how people live their lives, how they get their news and what content they want.

“We’re going to modernise our offer to audiences in England by making digital a central part of everything we do. We’ll take forward lessons from COVID-19 that will make us more agile and more in touch with communities while also ensuring we’re as efficient as we can be. I’m confident we can evolve our local and regional services while improving our impact and better serving our audiences.”

There will be no changes to the evening Look East TV news bulletin in our region, and the morning bulletin will return following its coronavirus break in the Autumn. The Sunday morning BBC Politics East show will also be retained.