Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what the viewing figures have been for local television stations, established under the Local Digital Television Programme Services scheme, since 2012.

There are currently 21 local TV stations on air. Data collected by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) in April 2016, showed that an average of 821,000 UK households watched at least one local TV channel on digital terrestrial television in an average week, for at least three consecutive minutes. Across the same period, an average of 1.5 million households per week watched a local TV service for a minimum of three consecutive minutes through any platform across the UK.