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On this page, you will see more about our current representative work and political engagement activities.
Community Radio Week 2026 - Parliament Awareness Day 3rd Feb 2026 - PCH Room M
The UK Community Radio Network is the national organisation that represents, supports, and develops Ofcom licenced Community Radio.
Community Radio in the UK is now over 20 years old, and in that time it has grown from a dozen access pilot stations to a sector of over 450 licenced stations, serving a variety of communities across the UK, from communities of location, to communities of interest or identity.
They play a vital role in supporting their communities, providing information, news and whats on, offering a platform for organisations, charities and individuals to come on and talk about what they are doing for their community, they help support the development of the local economy by providing opportunities of skills development, as well as the promotion of local businesses and entrepreneurial activities, and all stations are not for profit and have a requirement to provide social gain for their community.
These stations are more vital for their local communities than ever before, in the past 20 years we’ve seen the decline in ‘local’ commercial radio, with hundreds of studios closing across the country and a homogenisation of local brands into 3 or 4 national brands, and now local BBC has shifted to provide less local radio than it ever has, and this has caused an increase in demand from audiences for local content and local provision of radio.
Community Radio has successfully been broadcasting on FM (and in some cases AM) for over 20 years, and speaking to those in the sector, they see FM as a viable platform for decades to come. Small Scale DAB (SSDAB) was promised as the sector's route to digital radio, however there are many concerns about SSDAB including that the coverage for most SSDAB multiplexes are not as good as FM, and for some communities FM can be more accessible due to socio-economic or cultural concerns.
Previous Governments had discussed the concern of a ‘switch over’ or ‘migration’ when digital radio surpassed 50% of listenership, which has since happened but that plan was scrapped due to market conditions and representation from the industry.
However, we now find ourselves in a limbo without a strong commitment that FM will be here for decades further, this can limit engagement with FM stations, and a commitment for investment and long term support.
We believe the Government should commit to a future of FM for decades to come we also believe there should be a ‘migration’ for large commercial stations, and some national services onto DAB/Digital only platforms, this would free up frequencies for new FM community stations to launch, however we also want safeguards in place that radios of the future will not exclude FM reception, including hiding FM behind functions or menu options in favour of DAB/Digital platforms.
Ofcom has not done a fully open UK-wide licencing plane for analogue Community Radio for nearly a decade and in that time there has been significant evidence of demand for groups wanting to launch on FM or AM in areas across the UK, including those who have no other choice than to broadcast only online, or wait until Small Scale DAB (SSDAB) is open in their area. There have also in recent years been a number of licences fail or handed back against the will of the local community.
Most recently, Ofcom have said they do not have the resources to consider running licence rounds, they are due (Q1 2026) to run a consultation of what's next now that SSDAB licencing is coming to a close, but they have not committed to new FM licences.
The community radio fund should see a significant increase as it’s the only funding that is exclusively available to support Community Radio stations. For around the last decade it has sat at around £400,000 per year, occasionally seeing temporary increases during and post covid (the 2025/2026 fund was set at £1m), and has seen no real long-term rise since its inception.
The fund was launched in 2005 to help support the core costs of running an Ofcom licenced community radio station, back then there were only a dozen or so stations, with an expectation that there was around £25k per station to help support them.
If the fund had kept up with inflation, it should be worth more than £1m now, had it kept up with the number of stations on-air it should be worth at least £8m now. We need a significant increase in the Community Radio Fund and we need the fund to be kept in line with inflation. This is a vital resource which supports the development of Community Radio, and helps it deliver vital social gain to its communities.
In 2021 DCMS commissioned an evaluation of the Community Radio Fund. Amongst its findings was how the CRF can help develop the long-term income and sustainability of Community Radio stations, seeing an average increase in income of around 37%, and over half of stations reporting an increase in their unrestricted reserves to help them develop and sustain themselves should they experience any downturn in other income streams.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/623851bb8fa8f540f3202bd6/Community_Radio_Fund_Evaluation_FINAL_report__1_.pdf
This shows that the fund can be a catalyst for growth for individual stations and for the sector more widely, helping it become more sustainable. A substantial and permanent increase has the possibility for significant impact on the Community Radio sector, especially as we continue to see the sector grow with more stations launching all the time, especially as more routes to broadcast (via Small Scale DAB) are opened up. Strengthening this fund would enable more communities to be supported.
In addition to more resources, the funding also needs to enable longer-term commitments. As such, the Community Radio Fund should also be opened up to provide grants longer than for one year. For many stations that use the fund to employ a member of staff (for an income generation, business development, or grants development role), a one-year grant is not long enough to establish itself and make the role self-sustaining. A two or three-year grant period would make these roles more sustainable and make the return on investment to the sector more beneficial.
The Community Radio Fund should also be opened to provide funding for journalism and the generation of local news, as per the recommendation by the DCMS select committee in their inquiry into the sustainability of local journalism https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/33635/documents/183838/default/
Currently, very few, if any Community Radio stations ever receive bookings to play government advertising or PSAs (Public Service Announcements). As a result, these messages are not being served to a wide array of communities across the country, and some of these communities are diverse, deprived, and use Community Radio as a vital service for news & information.
In the last twelve months, the government has spent over £7 million on commercial radio. Even a small percentage of that spending being delivered towards Community Radio could inject sustainable and much-needed income into the sector, and also make sure Community Radio audiences do not miss out on vital communications.
This can be solved by political means, as the UK government's advertising agency will not deal with Community Radio stations directly, or they use RAJAR as the gatekeeper for access. RAJAR is too expensive and not suitable for most Community Radio stations, so a better solution, and a commitment from the government for this spending, must be forthcoming.
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The UK Community Radio Network is a registered Community Interest Company | Company Number: 13700623
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