Milton Keynes Council expresses 'deep concern' over BBC Look East merger

The merging of the west version of Look East with the Norwich-based broadcast is part of a raft of proposals outlined by the BBC for its local services

A council has expressed "deep concern" over plans to end the Cambridge-based version of BBC Look East.

The BBC is proposing to merge the regional news programme with the version broadcast from Norwich.

Milton Keynes Council said the growth in the region required "more, not less, investment in local journalism".

Jason Horton, acting director of BBC England, said he expected the move to result in more stories being covered in the East of England.

Currently editions of Look East are broadcast from Cambridge at 18:30 and 22:30 from Monday to Friday, with breakfast and lunch bulletins broadcast across the wider region from Norwich.

The merging of the Cambridge version of Look East with the Norwich-based broadcast is part of a raft of proposals outlined by the BBC for its local services.

They include ending the current affairs programme We Are England at the end of its second series and creating new online news services in Peterborough, Wolverhampton, Bradford and Sunderland.

Milton Keynes Council leader Pete Marland raised the issue of Look East at a full council meeting.

The Labour councillor put forward a motion asking the authority's chief executive to write to the director general of the BBC "to oppose these cuts to local and regional news".

Jason Horton, acting director of BBC England, said more people were accessing their news online

Mr Marland said some residents in the area, such as those in parts of Bletchley, would also be affected by the ending of the Oxford-based edition of South Today.

"Local politics thrives when journalists ask difficult questions," he told the meeting.

Conservative councillor David Hopkins said he supported the motion as a merged version of Look East would provide "watered down coverage of news locally".

The council unanimously passed the motion, which expressed "deep concern over the plans".

Mr Horton said money had to be reallocated from "linear" TV programmes, such as Look East, to "improve our news offer across our digital platforms".

"That has meant we've had to take some really tough decisions, both in the west of the Look East region and in the Oxford area of South Today, as well as our We Are England documentary series," he said.

"We've got to move money from some of the services we currently produce in a linear way, so on television, and move that into our digital news platforms. And we intend on doing that in the next couple of years, which is what the announcements were about."

He said the announcements did not represent a cut in investment in local news.

"We're going to maintain the same budget but what we're going to do is move that budget into a place where we are serving a growing audience on our digital platforms," he said.

"I genuinely think over the next couple of years we'll actually be able to increase the number of stories that we're telling across our all our platforms."