BBC Trust

The BBC has taken significant steps to improve its coverage of rural issues in the UK, the BBC Trust said today in a progress report. 

The report follows an independent review of the BBC’s rural affairs coverage published in 2014 by Heather Hancock, which found that there was a broad and comprehensive range of voices in the BBC’s coverage, and coverage of controversial issues such as badger culling was generally impartial, but there was a ‘deficit’ in UK-wide network coverage of rural England.

The Trust set a requirement for progress update from the BBC a year after the report was published.  Today’s progress report shows that since 2014, the BBC has:

• Improved links and collaboration between rural affairs and specialist journalists such as the Radio 4 Farming Todayteam and the wider BBC, leading to stories on network news programmes including BBC Breakfast, The One Show and the Today programme about farming technology, rural housing, the EU farm subsidy payments system, GM crops, pesticide legislation, and pesticide legislation. 
• Commissioned a range of programmes with a rural focus on BBC Two, including Lambing Lives, about life as a sheep farmer in Scotland, and Harvest, behind the scenes of British farming. 
• On Countryfile, included a range of harder-hitting stories such as rural crime, the milk price crisis, and the effect of National Park budget cuts.  This followed concerns from some who took part in the 2014 review that there could be a tendency to idealise rural life.
• Given three English regions reporters specific responsibility to provide rural affairs stories to network news, which has led to reports on network programmes such as BBC Breakfast about the milk price crisis, starling murmurations, and the recovery in barn owl numbers.

There has also been progress on including the rural perspective in topical stories, such as the Today programme’s ‘100 constituencies’ series in the run-up to the 2015 General Election, which reflected rural issues and voices around the country.  

BBC Trustee and Chair of the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee, Richard Ayre, said:

"The BBC has shown real commitment to improving its coverage of rural lives, communities and issues on network TV over the past year in response to our report, which has made a noticeable difference on-screen and on-air.   One of the big challenges both now and in the next Charter period  for the BBC is continuing to reflect the UK in all its diversity and we’ll look to them to continue the work they have started."

Today’s progress report can be found here:

Impartiality review of the BBC's coverage of the rural areas in the UK - Trust conclusions on the Executive's follow-up report, PDF (254KB)

Notes to Editors

The 2014 review of rural affairs coverage can be found here.