The Birmingham office of ITV was ten minutes away from taking over the broadcasting output for the whole network after the London bombs.

Charles Allen, chief executive of the company, revealed the complete back up was in place at the Gas Street studios and ready to broadcast to the nation.

Mr Allen was speaking at the studios in Birmingham yesterday when he formally open the £5 million upgrade of ITV Central's newsgathering operation.

He dismissed takeover talk but vowed to make more programmes in the regions.

It was reported yesterday that ITV's £586 million pension deficit deterred a consortium involving private equity group Apax and US media giant Time Warner from bidding for the broadcaster.

Mr Allen insisted ITV remained committed to the regions after Carlton and Granada merged to form a single company last year.

He said: "There is still a massive commitment to local programming. I opened a new centre in Nottingham a few months ago, and opened this facility today.

" We are committed to regional, national and international news, and will invest £45 million by the end of this year.

"We have put our money where our mouth is and invested in technology but also investing in training and developing new people.

"Someone from Central News was in London last week, reporting to the nation. That is fantastic. There was a complete back up in place here in Birmingham when the bombs were going off in London.

"Kings Cross and Tavistock Square are very close to our news operations, and we were ten minutes away from the news coming from Birmingham."

Mr Allen dismissed speculation about a takeover.

He said: "There has not been a single approach. Our job is to get on and build ITV. We have grown it by 50 per cent profit last year, and when our new results come out in September, there will be very good growth there."

ITV 2 and ITV 3 continued to do well, he added, while the decline of ITV 1's audience figures was mere "arithmetic"

caused by the increase of digital channels, he added.

Reality TV flops like Celebrity Love Island were part of a risk taking strategy, he added.

But Mr Allen said he wanted to see more regional programming, both from ITV and the BBC.

He said: "Unlike the BBC, over 50 per cent of our programme making is outside London, we have a £9 million fund in place to encourage that. We cannot do that in isolation, and I am very keen to see the BBC playing its part in making programmes in the regions."

Mr Allen said ITV was looking to devote half of its network budget - £400 million - to making new programmes outside London.

He said: "If you live in Birmingham or Leeds your view on life is different from someone who spends their life in Soho Square."