The next community radio licensing round

The first round of licensing community radio services is drawing to a close. This has been a very successful round, with 93 licence awards made so far. A diverse range of services is now starting to operate in communities all around the UK. Community radio is tailored to the needs of the target community, involving them in providing the service, bringing social benefits to that community, and provided on a not-for-profit basis.

Ofcom is planning to invite applications later this year for the second round of community radio licences.

‘Letters of intent’ to apply for a licence

In order to assist our planning for the second round of community radio development, we are now inviting prospective applicants for a community radio licence to submit a ‘letter of intent’, outlining their intention to apply.

A ‘letter of intent’ should include the following information:

* the proposed station or company name (if available)
* the location of the service you would like to operate (i.e. the area you wish to cover)
* the community you wish to serve
* AM or FM
* your contact details

Please send your letter of intent to apply for a community radio licence to communityradio@ofcom.org.uk, or by post to:

Community Radio Licensing
5 th Floor
Ofcom
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA

The closing-date for the submission of ‘letters of intent’ is Friday 21 April 2006.

Submission of a ‘letter of intent’ will not be taken as a binding promise on the part of its author to apply for a licence. Equally, the invitation to apply for a community radio licence will not be limited only to those who have submitted a ‘letter of intent’.

The ‘letters of intent’ will help Ofcom to design a licensing process which takes account of the pattern of expected demand in different parts of the country. This may involve inviting applications on a regional basis, rather than from all over the UK at the same time (as we did in the first round). This approach will help us to plan our work more effectively, and to reduce the period between an applicant submitting his or her application and Ofcom reaching a decision on whether to award a licence.

The availability of FM frequencies

For the second round of community radio licensing, Ofcom intends to continue to license the majority of services for stereo broadcasting on FM frequencies. However, due to the general lack of useable frequencies in major conurbations, and the large number of successful applicants in the first round of community radio licensing, there are some parts of the UK where Ofcom expects to experience great difficulty in identifying further suitable frequencies in the FM band. In these circumstances, Ofcom will investigate whether an FM frequency could be used for mono rather than stereo transmission. Operating in mono uses less bandwidth and is therefore less prone to incoming interference than stereo broadcasting. In addition, services may often be planned closer to one another in frequency terms, thus potentially enabling more services to be licensed in a region than if stereo was used. Identifying suitable FM frequencies which could be used for mono transmission may still prove challenging in some parts of the UK, however.

Areas of FM frequency scarcity

Potential applicants should note the areas where Ofcom has found it difficult to identify suitable FM frequencies for community radio services. This situation is not likely to improve, especially in many parts of the following regions:

* Greater London (within the M25). We do not expect to be able to find further FM frequencies (for either stereo or mono broadcasts) in much of Greater London, with the possible exception of areas south of the South Circular Road (A205).
* West Yorkshire
* Greater Manchester
* Home Counties
* Merseyside
* West Midlands
* South Wales (from Swansea to Newport)
* This is not an exhaustive list, and there may be other locations where we are unable to find suitable FM frequencies. This is particularly true of large conurbations.

AM (medium wave) frequencies

Applicants may choose to apply for a licence on either the FM or AM band. AM is generally more expensive to broadcast and sound quality is generally inferior to FM, but in some cases AM may be more suitable – for example in rural, hilly areas, or where FM frequencies are not available. We expect to be able to identify a limited number of frequencies on the AM band in some of the areas listed above, where additional FM frequencies are extremely scarce.