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1.1 The Ofcom/ DCMS Community Radio Fund enjoyed a successful year in parallel with the steadily expanding community radio sector, although demand for the fund far outstripped supply.

1.2 Ofcom had two rounds of applications for grants from the Community Radio Fund (‘the Fund’) in 2006/07.

1.3 Applications for the first round were invited on 21 April and the closing date was 18 May 2006. The Community Radio Fund Panel (‘the Panel’) met on 29 June 2006 to consider the applications.

1.4 The second round opened on 25 October 2006 and closed on 21 November 2006; the Panel met on 18 January 2007 to consider the applications.

1.5 Initially DCMS provided £450,000 for the year’s Fund. However, funding not distributed in previous years was later added to the Fund, so the final amount made available by DCMS was £830,000.

1.6 DCMS confirmed that the additional funding would be made available after the first round had taken place, therefore Ofcom permitted successful stations from the first round to reapply for an additional grant in the second round and five such stations were successful in both rounds.

Summary of payments

1.7 Ofcom made payments to 40 community radio stations, totalling £829,975.44 (details of individual awards are listed in Annex 1).

1.8 First round payments totalled £210,193 to 14 stations.

1.9 Second round payments totalled £619,782.44 to 32 stations (including 5 which were also successful in the first round).

1.10 75 stations applied for a total of £3.5m over both rounds (£1.7m in the first round - of which applications for grants totalling £0.5m were deferred for consideration in the second round - and £2.3m in the second round).

1.11 Grants to stations over the course of the year ranged from £9,250 up to £29,675.

1.12 The average payment was £20,749. (Although most grants were in support of one post, some stations did receive grants for more then one purpose; these figures reflect total payments.)

Misuse of funds

1.13 The Panel agreed a monitoring procedure to ensure that grants are spent appropriately. This has now implemented, and Ofcom has not found any evidence of misuse of funds.

Additional comments

1.14 Stations are only able to receive their grant once they are on-air (i.e. licensed), and it is a condition of the DCMS funding that they get on-air in the financial year the award is made.

1.15 Following the first round, one station (Youth Community Radio) which had been awarded a grant confirmed it would not get on-air in the financial year 2006/07. Therefore, the money that would have been paid to it was available to the fund for the second round.

1.16 Following the second round, one station (Chelmsford Calling) confirmed it was closing down before it received its grant, therefore the money was available to the fund. A second station (Voice of Africa) was unable to launch in time and its grant was also available to the fund. The Community Radio Fund Panel had, as a contingency, produced a standby list of stations to receive a grant in the event of funds being returned. Two stations on the standby list each received a grant of £18,600 (these figures are reflected in the totals above).

1.17 The Panel publishes a Statement following each round setting out the awards made and reiterating its ongoing priorities. During 2006/7 the Panel's priorities continued to be promoting the sustainability of stations through funding posts associated with fundraising, marketing and the development of community relations. It also encouraged joint applications from consortia of stations in such areas as training, fundraising and marketing, but there has been only one consortium application since the Panel began its work (the consortium applied in both 2005/6 and 2006/7). The Summary, Statement of Awards and additional comments by the Panel are available at www.ofcom.org.uk/radio/ifi/rbl/commun_radio/Communityfund/.

Comparison with previous year’s expenditure

1.18 In 2005/06 - when there were fewer stations on air and therefore eligible for grants - 17 stations received grants which totalled £444,026. Again, in some cases grants for more than one purpose were approved. The average grant was £23,874 and stations applied for £771,198 in total.

Panel members

1.19 The Panel is formed of three members appointed by Ofcom. The Chairman of the Panel is Kevin Carey, the Director of humanITy, Vice Chair of RNIB and an ex- member of the Ofcom Content Board. The two other members are Richard Hilton, a representative of the Community Media Association, the industry body for community media, and Thomas Prag, Chair of the Ofcom Advisory Committee for Scotland.

Grant feedback

1.20 Ofcom has received feedback from stations which were successful grant applicants in 2005/06; extracts from some of the feedback reports are set out below.

GTFM, Pontypridd
Grant received: Station Manager £20,300
“In terms of the main work carried out the Station Manager has had to spend most of his time securing the funding and future sustainability of the organisation which was not an easy task. However faced with closure almost a year ago through the ending of our main source of grant funding he has successfully negotiated funding from a number of sources which has meant that running costs for not only 2006/7 have been covered but crucially for 2007/8 as well. Through vigorous lobbying of the Welsh Assembly, almost single handedly, last November the Welsh Assembly announced the creation of a Community Radio Fund for Wales – an historic achievement in the development of community radio.”

Takeover Radio, Leicester
Grant received: Trust Manager £24,926
“Without the Community Radio Fund the station would not have survived, it is that simple.”

BCB, Bradford
Grant received: Director £16,776
“In terms of fundraising, the Director has also secured approximately £450,000 over the last twelve months – 34% of that from new funding bodies. This new funding has enabled us to develop in two key areas: Youth participation in radio broadcasting and the use of community radio as a medium to raise awareness around climate change (a DEFRA campaign). This could be very significant for the whole sector in future developments with diverse government agencies and their relationship to community radio.“

Unity 101, Southampton
Grant received: Station Manager £20,000
The Station Manager raised a total of £71,000 to fund the station.

ALL FM 96.9, Manchester
Grant received: Administrator £19,417, IT technician £4,392
“Without a full time administrator, the station would not have been able to create its financial and monitoring systems and would have found it very difficult to attract new funding and projects … The role of IT technician has been instrumental in keeping the station on air and enabling staff and volunteers to progress their work.”

Wythenshawe FM, Manchester
Grant received: Station Manager £11,713, Administrator £4,903
“The funding environment for community radio continues to be unpredictable at best and gloomy at worst. Even though WFM is one of the longest established full-time stations, it still has no stable core funding. The grant therefore enabled greater productivity at the station as it both funded valuable staff time and meant that less time had to be spent on pursuing funding from other sources.”

Resonance FM, London
Grant received: Assistant Manager £20,000, Station Managers £8,000, Programme Director £6,000
“[The grant] allowed for regular and proper remuneration for the staff for the first time in the station’s existence. This meant that the monthly necessity of finding new sources of money to pay basic wages could be ignored and efforts could be concentrated on more pressing or interesting matters: the implementation of new programming content, which entailed the recruitment of many more new volunteers to the project; an overhaul of the broadcasting equipment, which meant that the audience base could be expanded and much better served; an overhaul of the station’s website; an updating of the audience and user database; a marketing and press campaign; and the mentoring of new volunteer engineers. Outreach work was also much improved in this period.

The second and negative aspect of the grant lay in its one-off nature. Judging that the vast increase in the number of applicants to the CR Fund would necessarily entail at best a proportionate reduction in any future grant, it became apparent that, if funds were not secured from elsewhere, the crisis-management situation that had characterised the project’s finances in previous years would once again come to the fore. This meant planning cuts in staff, in wages, in projects. It also meant that it seemed unwise to advertise for a replacement when the young assistant manager [left]”

The full document is available below

• Community Radio Fund end of year report: 2006/07 [pdf]
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