Opinion: Powers that be have an urgent need to review their position

However there are plans being put into operation to axe radio shows and reduce resources to our local BBC Radio.

We are being told that what are being proposed are not cuts but savings and that they are necessary for moving the BBC into the digital age.

No matter the sugar coating by the BBC, what is proposed are cuts to our local public services and let’s face it the digital revolution, started around 1980 with the internet and after mobile devices , social networking, big data and computing clouds etc. There was plenty of time to effect any changes before today.

The local content losses follow a package of what the BBC are calling savings (but which are really cuts) which they announced last year, as it attempts to plug a £1.4B hole in its funding after in the license fee was frozen and are intent upon relocating funding to investing in digital services. None of this should not come at the expense of our local radio services and the communities served.

We are being inundated with local people and groups contacting us to lodge extensive concern and complaint at the diminution in provision, arising from the above, including proposals to merge content and to broadcast fewer local programmes.

There is also concern being expressed about the loss of local jobs at a time of great economic challenge and uncertainty and the culling of pipeline opportunities for local emerging talents, local development, showcasing and progression too.

In addition at stake also is the loss of locally based and delivered impartiality in news, essential for robust news coverage. Our BBC Radio Sheffield have striven and achieved impartiality down the years.

This has been and continues to be essential to our local democracy but right now it is under threat to a preference for algorithms rather than human representation and intervention. The future of local BBC radio is at stake and the losses to come and the fallout from these losses, should not be underestimated.The representation we are receiving from a vast range of diverse community members and groups are all expressing wholesale opposition to what is being proposed by the powers that be in the BBC. We too stand in solidarity with our local BBC Radio service and strongly oppose what is happening.

The powers that be in the BBC have urgent need to review its position to come up with a sustainable solution that preserves and invests in local BBC radio services rather than what is proposed now to cull them .

Chrissy Meleady MBE

CEO

Equalities and Human Rights U.K.