Up to 30 editorial and production jobs are being cut at BBC Scotland as it copes with “significant funding pressures”.

In a note to staff in BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland, management said it was aiming to deliver savings “without closing any major services”. It is seeking 115 job cuts in total.

The 25 top 30 job cuts in Scotland are expected over the next few months, along 40 to 45 at BBC Local in England, up 30in Wales and about a dozen in Northern Ireland.

BBC bosses say they want to focus resources on “the areas that deliver maximum value for audiences”, as well as “maintain our online growth across News, iPlayer, Sport and Sounds ”.

Recent cuts to staff and services include closing BBC Scotland’s barely-watched news programme The Nine. The BBC Scotland digital channel reached only 13% of the Scottish population, according to published figures.

As of 31 March the BBC’s public service headcount had dropped by 8.5% since 2018/19 to 19,231. Outside of local news cuts in recent years have affected areas like Newsnight, BBC World Service and the BBC News and BBC World News channels when they merged, although jobs have also been created largely in digital areas.

Critics say that even after recent cuts, the BBC continues to duplicate on big news stories, with national reporters and crews covering the same item alongside a locally-based team. There also seems to be no shortage of journalists to cover each story. At least five frontline correspondents contributed to online coverage of this week’s fiscal statement in the Scottish parliament.

A BBC spokesman told trade publication Press Gazette: “We have been clear that the significant funding pressures we face means that every division in the BBC needs to make savings. In July we said that we expected to see an overall reduction of around 500 BBC public service roles by March 2026.

“BBC Nations announced on Thursday that it expects to close up to 115 posts in editorial and production teams by next year as part of these plans. This represents around 3% of the division’s staffing. A number of further redundancies are anticipated in the division’s operations departments, but these will be shared directly with the teams affected first.

“While challenging, we aim to make these savings — as far as is possible — through voluntary redundancy and we can confirm that we expect to deliver the changes without closing any major services. In addition, there will no programme changes or savings impacting on BBC local radio output.”

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the journalists’ union the NUJ, said: “Coming on the back of a painful cull across BBC Local, these latest cuts across its regions and nations will further hollow out local news provision at a time when resources are stretched to breaking point.”