<div dir="ltr">As I've said before, they must have huge overheads if the £600 application fee does not (more than) cover the cost of considering the application.<div><br></div><div>Perhaps they ought to consider out-sourcing peaks in activity to commercial broadcast engineering consultancies who might be more flexible and maybe could do the work more cost effectively....?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Glyn Roylance</div><div>Principal Consultant</div><div><a href="http://www.a-bc.co.uk">www.a-bc.co.uk</a></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 24 March 2014 17:44, Ian Hickling <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:transplanfm@hotmail.com" target="_blank">transplanfm@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div dir="ltr">Can I ask how many others have fallen foul of Ofcom's restrictions on running an SRSL in any time period which clashes with the timing of Ramadan and Eid - approximately 27 June to 30 July this year?<br>
We have been refused even the consideration for a Licence for a 14-day RSL for a Client running an Arts Festival in an area where there is no Application for a licence for Ramadan on the pretext that:<br>
1 - We did not apply before 14 January - when we were not even aware of the event,<br>
2 - There is another (non-Ramadan) RSL licensed in the area - which we are also facilitating.<br>
3 - We are asking for "second frequency" - which we are not because the two will happily co-exist on the same channel by virtue of 16km of wooded hills between the two transmitters - and there are around 10 other feasible frequencies out of a total of 204 which could be used at the location we are submitting.<br>
4 - It has had to spend most of the last two weeks turning down similar requests and that it is not prepared to make a special case. <br><span style="FONT-FAMILY:'Times New Roman','serif';FONT-SIZE:12pt">
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">5 - It has received over 100 applications for this period, and engineers cannot plot all the frequencies if late requests keep coming in.</font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">6- The M25 and London is the scale of areas that can be closed off after the deadline and even if one RSL could be fitted in somewhere they don’t revisit the issue after the deadline is closed. In fact only three applications were received from within that very large area of population and one other was rejected as being received too late.</font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">7 - All applications (not just Ramadan) had to be in within the application window specified for them to undertake the work - which statement was apparently somewhere on the website but which was certainly not notified to its list of transmssion suppliers.</font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">The point I am making to Ofcom is that it knows it will receive a large number of Ramadan applications and it knows where they will be concentrated.</font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">It would seem prudent to prepare adequately for the demand and not actively penalise other areas. </font><font face="Calibri">Instead it appears to be rejecting applications which at any other time of year would be accepted and processed in the normal way.</font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">If we were in Leeds/Bradford/Huddersfield I could understand the problem.</font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri">But on the Berkshire/Oxfordshire border? </font></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Calibri"></font> </p></span> </div></div>
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