[cma-l] Community Media Association response to Ofcom's Community Radio Annual Reports 2013 – Key Commitment and other licence breaches

[Ian Hickling]

Reading through the full Report - the over-riding message is abundantly clear:

If you find you have a problem at any level of compliance - technical, administrative or in terms of material - tell Ofcom.
Nothing new about that - plain straightforward common sense, really!

Ian Hickling
Partner

Office: 01635 578435  (7am-11pm UK time)Carphone: 07530 980115 (only responds when driving)6 Horn Street, Compton, NEWBURY, RG20 6QS

From: cma-l at commedia.org.uk
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 11:10:35 +0100
To: cma-l at commedia.org.uk
Subject: [cma-l] Community Media Association response to Ofcom's Community Radio Annual Reports 2013 – Key Commitment and other licence breaches

The Community Media Association welcomes the conclusion of Ofcom's investigation of 38 community radio stations, 15 stations having been exonerated and removed from the original list of 53 that was announced last November. It appears that most of Ofcom’s investigations were concerned with technical or low offending compliance issues in the reporting.

Bill Best, Operations Manager of the Community Media Association (CMA) advises:

"The CMA was aware from the outset that a number of community radio stations appeared to have had difficulty with Ofcom's key commitments self-reporting system and that some stations could not meet key commitments that either had been too rigidly drawn up or were no longer relevant to the stations' operations. The CMA and Ofcom are here to help all community radio stations with regulatory compliance and we urge all stations to get in touch with us for assistance if required. The CMA applauds Ofcom's decision to take no further action with all but three community radio stations that have been found to be in breach. The CMA understands that Ofcom is considering a more streamlined and targeted approach to the reporting process that is expected to be a more appropriate system going forward and we welcome all improvements in this area".

Dom Chambers, Chair of the Community Media Association and station manager of Somer Valley FM said:

"This has been an uncomfortable episode and one that I feel has attracted unnecessary negative publicity for community radio at a time when we are trying to meet significant funding challenges. We must all make sure nothing like the scale of these investigations happens again. The CMA will continue to work with Ofcom and DCMS to ensure compliance monitoring is a more straight forward process. After all we must remember that so much work in our sector is reliant on the good will of volunteers. Maintaining morale is key to what community broadcasting achieves as a positive social force".

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/enforcement/broadcast-bulletins/obb282/Issue_282.pdf

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