Big City Radio was a community radio service serving all the communities of Aston, Birmingham, with a particular focus on the area’s ethnic communities, which was provided by Big City Radio CIC (“Big City”). The station is now called BRMB.
Ofcom has imposed a £1,200 financial penalty on Big City after our investigation found that it had failed to comply with the conditions of its licence.
In our decision published on published on 9 May 2023 in issue 473 of the Broadcast and On Demand Bulletin, Ofcom found that Big City had not delivered its programming requirements (“Key Commitments”) relating to the provision of speech content and original output and had failed to provide a programme schedule and related information to assist our assessment of whether the Licensee had been compliant with its Key Commitments. Big City had therefore breached Licence Conditions 2(1), 2(4) and 9(1) of its licence.
These were serious and repeated breaches of Big City’s licence conditions. The breaches of Licence Conditions 2(1) and 2(4) relating to Key Commitments were the third breaches of these conditions within five years. This was despite a previous financial penalty of £500 being imposed in February 2020 and the fact we had agreed to halve Big City’s requirement for original and local output to 12 hours per day in September 2020. In relation to the breach of Licence Condition 9(1) for failure to provide information, this was the second time we had recorded a breach against the Licensee for such a failure.
Ofcom reminded Big City that It is important to ensure it has the appropriate resources and support to help with the management and day-to-day running of the station to ensure compliance with its Licence.
The financial penalty of £1,200 will be paid by Big City to HM Paymaster General.