Eye on the Prize - North and South

Three years to the day after opening for business at MediaCityUK, we have been asked by the Director General to build on the work we started at BBC North - developing strong partnership networks across English towns and cities, getting closer to all our audiences and working more effectively together in our bases.

BBC North now becomes part of BBC England, which we will run from MediaCityUK in Salford, working closely with BBC Bristol and BBC Birmingham to bring our collaborative approach to fresh challenges right across the country.

This week's announcement that a further 100 BBC roles are to move to the Midlands puts more key departments at the heart of the nation. The BBC Academy, vital pan-UK skills training for BBC staff and freelancers, plus the core of the BBC's HR and central internal communications team will move to Birmingham next year. Our base in Birmingham will become the centre of BBC recruitment and talent development for the whole UK.

These new roles are central to the digital and creative sectors outside London where skills training and investment are crucial for the future. That's why our work with partners like Creative Skillset, Arts Council of England's The Space and Creative England are important. And tertiary education too - this week we announced that BBC Breakfast are to sponsor North East students in traineeships to commemorate our late, wonderful editor Alison Ford, born in Newcastle, who died nearly 12 months ago. We now hire 20 new people every month at MediaCityUK and over the past three years 60 young people have launched their careers through our entry level schemes - few formal qualifications required.

It's likely that more BBC jobs will also come to Salford as we rationalise our London property and further refine the BBC's new digital strategy, some of which is already powered by BBC future media technologists, designers and engineers based at MCUK.

I'm very proud that the last three years has led to some innovative BBC work with new partners across the North, often building on our superb regional and local services, knitting together different strands of BBC output: from Frankenstein Live in Leeds to The Preston Passion, from South Shield's The Great North Passion to Rankin's Alive in the Face of Death Liverpool exhibition, from Sheffield Crucible's CBeebies Panto to the 2014 Sports Personality of the Year from the new Leeds Arena and the Salford Sitcom Festival too. Just ahead is CBBC Live in Newcastle-Gateshead, the Sheffield Documentary Festival, Yorkshire's Tour de France opening weekend and Liverpool's WW1 Royal de Luxe street parades, plus of course Manchester International Festival and the Hull City of Culture programme, all of which we are delighted to support. From Whitby to The Wirral, Warrington to Teesside, Halifax to Humberside, there is more BBC content being made or already on air - from dramas like Happy Valley to In The Club, From There to Here to Our Zoo, and from kids' shows like Old Jack's Boat to Three Little Pigs, our collaboration with Northern Ballet. This weekend brilliant network shows Last Tango in Halifax, In The Flesh, Dragons’ Den and the innovative Bollywood Carmen Live from Bradford - all made in the region - are up for BAFTA TV awards.

We wish all our programme makers well and whatever our new duties running BBC England, we don't intend to take our foot off the pedal across the North. Instead I hope we can learn valuable lessons from each other across the country - for instance, Bristol's Food Connections week just attracted nearly 200,000 participants to its events - a collaboration between BBC services right across the UK and some passionate partners in the city. In Birmingham we are working with the Local Enterprise Partnership's Creative City team to make sure a new BBC innovations unit based in Digital Digbeth can be a key part of regeneration plans and help us tap into the city's exciting young multicultural audiences - that feels like another win-win.

We have much to gain from these changes ourselves and I hope audiences the length and breadth of the country will benefit too - from closer creative relationships with BBC England working alongside our local and regional teams from Carlisle to Plymouth, Norwich to Penzance.

Peter Salmon is Director, BBC England

• Read more about the announcements in this blog on the Media Centre website.