The BBC has announced new funding and commissioning plans to build on the success of shows such as Blue Lights, Death Valley (pictured) and Only Child.

The plans will see the broadcaster double spend on commissioning new shows for TV and BBC iPlayer that reflect stories in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – from c£50 million last year to over £100 million million from 2027/28 – across Drama, Comedy and Unscripted. The BBC says that the increased investment, from within existing budgets, will “ensure more high-impact, quality programmes that tell authentic, homegrown stories from the devolved Nations to UK-wide audiences”.

This announcement builds on the BBC’s previous Across the UK commitment to increase the volume of portrayal in its output, which has also seen a range of programmes representing communities in England, from This City Is Ours and Riot Women to Smoggie Queens and Ambulance.

The BBC has also announced that it is bringing together its Content and Nations teams under a new TV commissioning model. From April 2025, Nations and Genre commissioning will work as one, with a single UK-wide strategy and process. This change aims to deliver a more impactful offer for audiences and simplify the way the BBC works with its production partners.

In parallel the BBC continues to build its commissioning presence across the UK, with specialisms reflected across the Nations and more commissioning roles in the Midlands and North of England, having almost doubled the number of network commissioners based outside of London since 2021

Rhuanedd Richards, Interim Director of Nations at the BBC, commented: “It is widely recognised that in recent years the BBC has significantly improved how we authentically represent and portray the people, communities and nations of these isles – but we want to go further. By spending more of our budget on homegrown storytelling and ensuring that more decision-making happens closer to audiences, we believe we can become even more relevant, distinctive and loved by audiences everywhere. This is an important development for commissioning in the Nations, but our ambition is to go even further. We are also planning greater investment in the creative economy in the Midlands and the North of England too and to strengthen our commissioning and production in these regions. This approach will also lead to greater investment the creative economies across the UK.”

Kate Phillips, BBC Chief Content Officer, added: “Ensuring accurate and authentic representation of audiences across the UK is fundamental to the BBC’s core purpose. Over recent years, we’ve worked hard to increase the impact of our portrayal content. Today’s announcement not only ensures more of our content budget is channelled towards this vital work, but also marks our intention to create an integrated commissioning team to shape a high-impact slate of content that reflects each Nation’s distinctive voice. As well as making our content more relevant to audiences, we hope this new way of working will offer clearer entry points and decision-making for our external partners and producers. By collaborating more closely and investing more consistently, we can deliver a slate that captures life across the UK with scale and creative impact never seen before.”

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Content, Production

Tags: BBC, Drama, Ireland, production, scotland, wales