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BBC announces further 70 job cuts in news division

<span>Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA</span>
Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA

The BBC has announced plans to cut a further 70 jobs from its news division, with Radio 4 and political programming expected to be badly hit.

Staff on shows such as Today, World at One and PM on Radio 4 are privately warning that audiences should expect less distinctive programmes, with more discussion of stories that have been covered across the rest of the BBC.

The corporation has already indicated that job cuts will result in the creation of centralised teams of reporters.

There will also be substantial cuts to politics programmes, with BBC Two’s Politics Live reduced to four days a week and Andrew Neil no longer presenting on a regular basis. His standalone Andrew Neil Show on BBC Two will not return in its current form, although the corporation is in talks about giving the veteran interviewer a new show on BBC One.

The BBC previously announced plans to reduce 450 staff from its news teams, implementing long-delayed cuts prompted by the licence fee deal agreed with the Conservative government in 2015. This led to anger at the cancellation of programmes such as Victoria Derbyshire and hefty cuts to shows such as Newsnight.

These redundancies were paused owing to the pandemic, but on Wednesday the BBC confirmed they would be going ahead, with many staff who have worked throughout lockdown once again braced to lose their jobs.

A delay in requiring most over-75s to pay the licence fee and a drop in the BBC’s commercial income due to the pandemic has led to it now announcing plans to make a further 70 news roles redundant, taking the total losses to around 520.

It has yet to be decided exactly where the cuts will fall, although some of the supposedly temporary measures introduced during the pandemic – such as sharing news bulletins across multiple outlets – are likely to become permanent.

The BBC’s director of news, Fran Unsworth, said: “This crisis has led us to re-evaluate exactly how we operate as an organisation. And our operation has been underpinned by the principles we set out earlier this year: fewer stories, more targeted and with more impact.”

Wednesday’s announcement is separate to the hundreds of jobs cuts to the BBC’s regional programmes announced last week, with particularly deep cuts to the local news reporting hub in Birmingham and the end of many specialist local radio shows.

Hundreds of journalism jobs are being axed across the industry. The BBC’s licence fee income means it is less affected by the pandemic than its commercial rivals, which face making even deeper cuts. On Wednesday the Guardian announced plans to cut 180 jobs, including 70 from its editorial teams.