Robert Thompson
Interim Director of Production, BBC Local
Roles and responsibilities
- Robert Thompson leads BBC Local production operations, overseeing television, radio, and digital services across England.
- He manages around 2,000 staff delivering content across 39 Local Radio stations, 43 news websites, and 13 regional TV news programmes.
- Robert is responsible for local journalism output including investigative reporting, local sport coverage, and content distributed across BBC platforms such as BBC One, Sounds, and the News App.
Biography
Robert Thompson is the interim Director of Production, BBC Local. He has responsibility for leading teams working across a vast and unique set of television, radio and online services across England.
Prior to this role Robert was the Senior Head of Content Production for London and the East of England. There he was responsible for all online news services from the region, TV news programmes BBC Look East and BBC London News along with radio stations: Radio London, BBC Three Counties Radio, BBC Essex, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, BBC Radio Norfolk, BBC Radio Suffolk and BBC Radio Northampton.
Robert played a key role in the Local Value for All strategy, transforming the future of BBC Local to ensure the multimedia service delivers effectively across the BBC’s mobile portfolio, including BBC Sounds, BBC News and BBC Sport.
In an earlier role he was the Managing Editor for Online and TV in England leading teams to deliver regional output across TV and online and developing new workflows for local digital content. He worked closely with network news teams to ensure local content was featured. He led the Central News Service which provided National and International news for the Local Radio network.
Robert helped to launch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel initially as the planning editor before moving to deputy editor. He was the editor of BBC Midlands Today in Birmingham leading the TV and online team to win an international award for its programmes. He also worked as an assistant editor at BBC London TV leading teams in 2012 – the capital’s Olympic year. He has also edited editions of the BBC News at 6 and 10.
For a number of years Robert was a producer at CBBC Newsround, moving to be the deputy editor. He was Newsround’s first ‘integrated’ producer delivering content for TV and online. Newsround took Robert around the world and has produced from the scene of many major stories including the South Asian tsunami, the US elections the Olympics.
He also made a series of documentaries and was part of the team that helped to launch a Children’s news service on the CBBC Channel. He was also a video journalist working on a pilot producing hyper local news in the West Midlands.
Robert started his BBC career at BBC Radio Suffolk. He is currently BBC Local’s executive sponsor for diversity and inclusion. He is based at the BBC’s London Broadcasting House but is often found working out of all the sites in his region.
Expenses and central bookings
Expenses are costs incurred by BBC staff on behalf of the BBC and claimed through the BBC's expenses system.
Central bookings are costs incurred on behalf of the BBC and booked through the BBC's central bookings system.
Expenses and central bookings for the 2024/25 financial year onwards are available to view here.
Gifts and Hospitality Register
Gifts and hospitality may only be accepted in line with BBC policy.
Declaration of personal interests
Staff must make a declaration of their personal and business interests, including any memberships or directorships of public or industry bodies, and any shareholdings, as well as any interests that their immediate families may also have.
A summary is published where there is something to declare and where there is nothing to declare. Occasionally an individual will have something to declare but due to the personal nature of the declaration we do not publish details as to do so would breach the General Data Protection Regulation.
This information is published annually, although if any amendments are made during the year an updated summary will be published if necessary as soon as it is available.
Downloads
Robert Thompson's Declaration of Personal Interests will be published shortly.
