We’ve launched our latest report into the state of local news provision across the UK. In this post, Joe Mitchell, PINF’s deputy director, explains why we do it and shares some of the key findings.
The 2025 Local News Report is here!
PINF’s mission is to ensure every UK community has high quality local news that meets our ASPIRE framework (accountable to local communities; financially sustainable; in the public interest; innovative; representative of people from all backgrounds; engaging and compelling). To do that, we need to measure and track local news access in those communities: where in the UK has access to local news? Where doesn’t? What kind of places are they that have none, some or plenty of local news? What kinds of change are we seeing over time?
Since 2023, PINF has been trying to find out. It is by no means an easy question — even if we take the simple existence of a local news outlet as a proxy for ‘access to local news’, we still have to define 'local’, ‘news’ and ‘outlet’. (You can learn more about how we do this in the methodology of the report).
The 2025 Local News Report is our third such report, powered by our Local News Database. The latter had a full refresh in October, based on the automated data-checking scripts we built in 2024 and everything people — thanks if that was you — had told us had changed. We are confident that this is our most accurate and detailed database yet, caveat of course that the real-world is constantly changing, so like any mapping, we're always half-a-step behind.
The 2025 report certainly represents our most in-depth analysis yet, with huge thanks to Simona Bisiani for 99% of this work. It compares the numbers of local news outlets per local authority district, of which there are some 360ish of varying types in the UK. We analyse absolute numbers and per-capita numbers to give a picture of deserts, drylands and oases, in chapter 2.
In chapter 3, we look at launches and closures since the last report, and whether there’s a pattern regarding where those launches and closures happen (spoiler alert: there is).
Our database can also be used to run regression analysis, looking for correlates with socio-economic and demographic data on those council areas. We look at those findings in chapter 4.
The report also covers ownership, in chapter 5, such as where there are ‘monopoly districts’ where only one company provides all the local news in that area, as well as local journalist numbers. For the first time, we also map the BBC Local News Partnership contracts, i.e. where has a ‘Local Democracy Reporter’ funded by the BBC.
What have we found?
Obviously, I’d recommend diving into the full report, but for a quick summary, here are seven findings that stood out to me:
- News deserts affect 4.4 million people. Roughly one in ten Local Authority Districts (37 in total) qualify as news deserts. One in ten! Of those, there are 27 ‘absolute’ deserts — where there's no local news outlets covering the area at all. There are ten ‘relative’ deserts, where although they don’t have a dedicated local news outlet for the area, they are at least covered by a neighbouring local news title.
- Those news deserts are not evenly distributed across the UK. They are predominantly in urban areas rather than rural.
- Local news outlets per capita is weakest in urban areas. London has the lowest coverage ratio with roughly one outlet per 100,000 residents, while Scotland, Wales, and the south west England have approximately three times more outlets per capita.
- Younger and minority ethnic communities suffer worst from local news inequality. Statistical analysis reveals that districts with higher median age have more outlets per capita, while areas with larger Black, Asian, Indian, or non-British White populations have fewer outlets. Districts with higher crime deprivation also tend to have fewer outlets.
- Since the last report, we’ve seen 22 launches, and 22 closures. Again, launches (predominantly digital-first, on either Ghost or Substack) and closures are not evenly distributed. Closures disproportionately occurred in the most deprived urban districts with few titles, while launches spread across moderately affluent or mixed urban-rural communities. Without intervention, then, news inequality is widening. Over 40% of closures took place in north east England, the most deprived region affected.
- The independent sector plays an outsized role in holding up access to local news. For nearly half of districts served by one title only, it is an independent news provider that stands alone in preventing the district becoming a news desert.
- More than one in three outlets belong to just three companies — Newsquest, Reach, and Iconic Media (formerly National World). More than one in five Local Authority Districts (81 districts) operate under single-owner monopolies, with no plural ownership.
All this and more in the full report:
Local News Report - December 2025
Show me the charts
We’ve refreshed the interactive map at map.publicinterestnews.org.uk. This shows you the local news outlets per district, and whether they have an office or registered address in the district (and if not, where their address is).
We also have a range of new interactive charts which can be accessed from the report. A couple of favourite examples below. First, a map of deserts, drylands and oases:
Second, a chart showing the correlation between places ranked highly in crime deprivation rankings, and lowly in outlets-per-100,000:
And third, a mapping (a first!) of the Local Democracy Reporting Service contracts:
Don’t like our charts? Make your own! You can access the database here.
What next?
There’s still much more to learn in truly understanding the divergence of local news ecosystems across the UK. Just because somewhere has a local news outlet, does it really mean that the public interest needs are being met? Could we look at what topics outlets are covering, in what depth, and how they’re meeting community needs? With greater resources we could delve into some of these questions — using sampling methods, or machine-reading and learning, to try to go beyond outlets into actual content. We could also look in more detail at community needs and demand for local news.
We’re not alone in asking these questions and trying to better understand and map local news provision. It’s a global conversation, with academics and research institutions across the world trying to best understand the local answers to these questions — for example, the rocket fuel approach of Press Forward USA (see last week’s blog) has led to the creation of the Local News Impact Consortium, the work of which we’re following closely. In Australia, the mapping and analysis work has recently been taken on by ACMA, their communications regulator — if anyone from Ofcom wants to take the local news map on, let us know!
As always, we’re grateful to everyone who’s helped on the design, planning and funding of the mapping work — and to everyone who’s pointed out errors or raised questions. (We’ve had some already in response to the refreshed 2025 data and do please keep them coming!)
Please also let us know if you use the data — we’d love to see new analysis and visualisations.
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