Community Radio Fund: award of grants for 2008/09 Round 2

Published 28|01|09

Ofcom's Community Radio Fund Panel met on Wednesday 28 January to consider applications for the second round of grant awards for 2008/09. In summary, at the time of the meeting:

• The Department for Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) allocated £455,000 towards the Community Radio Fund for 2008/09 (a further £45,000 was allocated to other community radio rojects) In the first round of funding (June 2008), the Panel made grants totalling £266,600. A further £27,500 was available to the Fund Panel following the return of a grant made to Angel Radio (Isle of Wight) in 2006/07. Therefore at the time of the meeting there was £215,900 available to the Fund.
• 56 applications were considered
• 3 applications were not considered as the stations concerned had not commenced broadcasting.
• Funding applications totalled £1,278,320.88
• 15 applicants were awarded grants which totalled £215,894
• 41 applicants were not awarded a grant

Second round of applications for funding in 2008/09

The Panel reviewed each application and awarded funding based on the information provided, and with reference to the Community Radio Fund guidance notes. The Panel’s decisions were for:

• a full award;
• a partial award; or
• not to award any funding.

The average grant in this round was £14,392. A table setting out the awards is at the end of this statement. The Panel notes that one grant (for £29,000) was for a substantially higher sum then the average. The Panel wishes to record that this was for a high quality application which directly addressed many of the Panel’s key criteria for grant awards; it will fund a Business Development post that will provide direct support to a range of community radio stations in the Lancashire region, thus promoting the long term sustainability of a number of stations.

Issues of note arising from the Panel meeting

The Panel wishes to draw attention to a number of issues that arose during their deliberations:

• The Panel has fixed no upper limit for grant applications but would expect applicants to take note of the history of applications and awards, which is in the public domain, when considering making future applications.
• Owing to the large number of applications the Panel gave priority to those stations which had not previously received an award.
• The Panel took into account the level of need of individual stations. These last two points meant that there were a number of stations which submitted high quality applications to which the Panel was unable to award a grant.
• However, the Panel also noted that a number of applications suffered from a lack of clarity in answering some of the questions, and would remind applicants that, because of the competitive nature of the process, the standard of applications needs to be high.
• The Panel was concerned that, as with previous funding rounds, some applicants appeared to be unaware of the Fund Panel’s priorities as set out in the Panel’s statements and the Fund notes of guidance (for example, in the Fund notes of guidance section 1.2 ‘What is the Fund for?’ and Annex A ‘Exclusions List’).

Priorities

The Panel wishes to continue to make grants for core activities, particularly to newly-licensed stations, in line with guidance from DCMS. The Panel considers promoting long-term sustainability a critical, core activity, and will take special note of innovative proposals that have this aim, such as those focusing on business development and fund-raising. The Panel also believes there is scope for more collaborative working or joint applications from stations and was pleased to be able to make an award to one such joint application in this round.

Applications for the first round of funding in 2009/10

• Applications will be invited on 15 April 2009.
• The closing-date for applications will be four weeks later, i.e. 12 May 2009.
• The Panel will meet to make decisions on these applications on 29 June 2009.
• At the time of publication, Ofcom cannot confirm how much money will be available to the Fund during the financial year 2009/10. Ofcom understands that DCMS will continue to support alternative community media projects, however the exact amount to be used in this way in 2009/10 has yet to be decided but Ofcom expects it to be of a similar size (£45,000).
• The Panel will give priority to those applicants who have not received funding in previous years.

Summary of grants awarded in the second round for 2008/09