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Community Radio (Amendment) Order 2010

My Lords, community radio was established in the UK in 2005 following the Community Radio Order 2004. In a relatively short period of time the community stations have established themselves as an essential part of the radio landscape. More importantly, they have become both a voice and a focal point for the communities they serve. To date, the regulator, Ofcom, has awarded over 200 community radio licences, of which approximately 150 stations are currently broadcasting. Stations can be heard the length and breadth of the country, from Orkney to the Isles of Scilly, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the range of programming they produce is equally as broad. A station produces on average 77 hours per week of live broadcasting. Over 30 per cent of daytime output is speech-based, the vast majority of which is highly localised. Stations play a wide range of musical styles, often promoting local musicians and bands. What makes community radio unique, though, is that this content is delivered by an army of volunteers—on average, 75 volunteers per station per year. For these reasons we believe that community radio, while still in its infancy, has already proved a valuable addition to the local cultural and social landscape. The Community Radio Order 2004 placed limitations on the sources of revenue and licensing of community radio stations. These restrictions were intended to reflect our concerns that a new tier of local radio that would have access to public funding could have a detrimental impact on existing local stations. More fundamentally, the restrictions sought to ensure that community radio be complementary, rather than just a new tier of competition, to the existing radio industry. However, we have kept these restrictions under review to assess both their impact and the extent to which the protection they afforded remained appropriate. The most recent of these reviews, published in late 2007 by Ofcom, recommended a relaxation of the current regime. Recommendations were also made in the Government’s own review of local radio, conducted as part of the Digital Britain programme. It is in the light of these recommendations and our own subsequent consultation that we now propose the changes set out in the draft Community Radio (Amendment) Order 2010. The draft order addresses three main issues, as well as some more minor points. I propose to deal with the key issues first. The first proposal is to remove the restriction that currently prohibits community radio stations from taking more than 50 per cent of funding from any one source. This restriction was put in place to prevent stations from becoming overly reliant on a single source of funding and, to a lesser extent, to protect against a majority funder influencing the editorial content of a station. We still believe these principles to be valid, although we also now accept that they can be achieved in different ways. Not least of these are the impartiality rules set out in the Communications Act 2003, which provide a sufficient safeguard of editorial impartiality for all other types of broadcasting. We also note that Ofcom’s decision in 2008 to allow volunteer time to be offset against revenue has in practice already allowed stations to take single-source funding of greater than 50 per cent. The second set of proposed changes would remove the restriction prohibiting a community radio station from being licensed in an area that overlapped with a commercial station with a coverage area of 50,000 adults or fewer. The effect of this has been to prevent some areas where there is obvious demand from having access to a community station. In light of our experiences to date, we are now satisfied that the advertising and sponsorship restrictions are sufficient to protect even the smallest of stations. This restriction can therefore be removed. The third major change would allow existing community radio licence-holders to apply for an extension of their licence for a period of up to five years. This is because we recognise that, in many cases, community radio stations are taking longer than anticipated to become fully established, particularly in building relationships within communities and a volunteering network. We will keep this change under review, alongside the others introduced in this order, to consider their impact. We have also taken the opportunity of a new order to clarify the licensing regime set out in the Community Radio Order 2004. This sets out more clearly for licence-holders and Ofcom the considerations that need to be made before a community radio licence is granted. However, these two minor amendments are entirely consistent with the policy as we agreed it in 2004. We believe that the changes set out in the draft order, taken together, will help to build on the successes of community radio and to establish a more sustainable sector for the longer term. I assure the Committee that I am satisfied that the draft order is compatible with convention rights. I beg to move.