BBC plans to focus on Leave voting towns it ‘under-served’ in 2016

THE BBC is to focus news programmes on towns and cities that voted Leave, after admitting it “under-served” them during the EU referendum.

Answering critics who accused it of representing a metropolitan elite, it will overhaul its regional news output and give more time to voices from the Midlands and the North of England,

In its Annual Plan, the BBC mentioned Bradford, Sunderland, Wolverhampton, Blackpool and Peterborough – most voted at least 60 per cent in favour of leaving the European Union.

It comes two months after Oliver

Dowden, the Culture Secretary, said the BBC had failed to grasp the strength of pro-brexit feeling with its “narrow urban outlook” in its news reporting.

John Humphrys, the former presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, said the referendum result took the BBC by surprise as it had become out of touch with ordinary people.

The plan states: “We need to focus on an audience that is less well served by the BBC’S current network portfolio. This is likely to involve a greater emphasis on audiences in the Midlands and North of England.”

The change is part of a wider change in BBC local news services in England, which are to undergo a “profound transformation” amid budget cuts. The plan admits its current strategy was “effectively created in the Sixties and Seventies” and “while little has changed in the BBC’S editorial offer or geographical targeting, audiences have changed”.

Elsewhere in the plan, it was stated that a “downgraded” BBC Four could become the first BBC TV service available to foreign audiences, as a subscription channel.

Meanwhile, Mr Dowden told the Downing Street briefing on coronovirus that he hoped the BBC would continue to delay making over-75s pay a licence fee if the crisis continued into August.