BBC journalists working for Radio Suffolk and Look East are to strike for 24 hours on Wednesday - Budget Day - in protest at cuts to local services.

The BBC is to cut local stations like Radio Suffolk - reducing their local content to just eight hours a day five days a week.

After 2pm there will be region-wide programmes without the local focus that listeners enjoy.

The strike, which has been called by the National Union of Journalists, will start at 11am, 90 minutes before Jeremy Hunt is due to make his Budget speech in the House of Commons.

Paul Siegert, NUJ national broadcasting officer said: “This is the biggest threat facing local radio since it launched in 1967.

"The key to its success over the past 50 years has been its localness. When it stops being local it loses its USP.

"If these proposals are allowed to go ahead it will be the beginning of the end for local radio. The NUJ is not opposed to the BBC investing in digital services, but there are ways of having both.

"More than five million people listen to local radio and many of them pay their licence fee largely because of local radio. They have every right to be angry.”

The former voice of BBC Radio Suffolk's afternoons, Lesley Dolphin, has written to Tim Davie, BBC director general, saying: "BBC managers are proud that they have journalists on the ground in every county.

*But local radio is so much more than a news service – it is embedded in local communities and gives people a sense of place, a chance to celebrate heritage and art.

"It will be impossible to do that if programmes are shared across a wider area.”

The reduction in local broadcasting is expected to be introduced soon after Easter.