debate

Greater flexibility for community radio stations to serve local listeners

Published: 13 November 2024

Ofcom is simplifying and streamlining some of the regulatory requirements on community radio stations, so they can focus on delivering social gain for their local communities.   

Following a consultation, we will now vary community radio licences to give stations greater flexibility with regard to their Key Commitments - which describe the service they are required to provide. 

We want to ensure that licensees have more flexibility to determine how best to serve their community, while ensuring appropriate rules remain in place to protect the overarching character of a service. To do this, we will remove specific quotas on:  

  • the types of programming to be broadcast - for example, the main types of music and speech output;
  • the number of hours of original output broadcast each week; and
  • the number of hours of locally produced output. 

We will introduce specific safeguards to ensure that, for some stations which broadcast in non-English languages, these languages are specified in the character of their service.  

After considering feedback from consultation responses, we will also develop some additional principles for compliance with off-air social gain requirements. These changes should provide further guidance to licensees when considering whether they are complying with their Key Commitments.

Next steps

We will now write to all analogue community radio licensees to start the formal licence variation process and propose new draft character of service descriptions. These will be based on the character of service description already included in each respective licence, with standardised wording and including any aspects of programming which we consider to be fundamental to the station’s character.

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