Can Community Radio Keep Local Audio Alive?

At a time when the survival of local radio in the UK is under threat, community stations offer an alternative for hyperlocal news and much-needed training. But how can these platforms be made more sustainable in the digital age?

Can Community Stations Keep Hyperlocal News Afloat?

Community station Radio Jackie, a stalwart purveyor of local news to South West London, lost 80 per cent of their funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tens of other small community radio stations were forced to close as costs became insurmountable. But Radio Jackie knew that their listeners needed radio more than ever at this time – and their busy programme allowed them to bounce back despite cuts.

The rebirth of commercial radio since the pandemic has underlined the difficulties of keeping local radio alive. “We can’t compete with commercial radio,” says Radio Jackie’s station manager Steve Mowbray. “I think that the days of radio, as I know them, will be over in ten years.”

Radio listenership boomed as hybrid working kept more of the population in their homes. This benefitted the commercial sector in particular, which saw a record 36.3 million average weekly listeners in the first three months of 2020, according to the UK’s radio audience researcher RAJAR.

Community radio, the steadily rising third sector of the industry after local commercial and local BBC radio, has emerged as a much-needed source of hyperlocal radio across the UK. Community radio is filling the gap left by a dwindling focus on traditional “local” news and topics across the commercial and BBC radio sectors. With the UK Community Radio Network (UKCRN) now estimating a total of 350 plus community stations, this growing sector faces consistent underfunding.

Research into radio listeners during COVID by the University of Northampton and UKCRN demonstrated that local community radio has an “overwhelmingly positive” impact on health, employment and community cohesion.

“With community radio they’re really being spoken to all the time,” says chief researcher Dr Alison Hulme, who explains that participants would even be more likely to trust their local community station than national stations.

BBC And Commercial Cut Back On Their Local Radio Stations

Local radio has been under threat as the leading commercial conglomerates Bauer and Global have bought up around 50 local stations and replaced 40-plus local breakfast shows to form super regions for radio. This continues a trend where, over the past twenty years, hundreds of local commercial radio stations have closed.

The most traditional form of local radio offered by the 39 BBC stations has equally reduced following unpopular £500 million-saving job cuts in 2022, where the local radio services merged and there was a cut back on programming.

The community radio industry credits their survival to both their relatability to local listeners and heritage in their local area. Radio Jackie is London’s oldest independent radio station, founded in March 1969 and started broadcasting 24 hours a day by 1983.

“There is still an appetite [for community radio],” insists Steve, who maintains Radio Jackie’s continued all-day programme of light-hearted breakfast news shows, music programmes and local traffic alerts.

Is The UK Government Investing Enough?

The main source of grant funding for community stations is the Community Radio Fund, allocated by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and managed by Ofcom. For the 2024-25 period the fund offered a total of £400,000. Distributed in grants, this fund supports “core costs” of non-profit, Ofcom-licensed community stations.

However, funding has remained stagnant since 2005, despite inflation. According to the founders of UKCRN Martin Steers and Nathan Spackman, each community station needs anywhere from £1,200 to £30,000 a year to run, covering running costs and some staff – with most work done on a volunteer basis. They also emphasize that the sector has seen unprecedented growth since it formally began twenty years ago, expanding from an initial cluster of about 12-15 stations.

The limitations on how exactly stations can spend their grant money is equally a cause for concern amongst community radio leaders who can’t afford staff. DCMS grants are allocated for specific projects, rather than contributing to general running costs – of which community radio stations are in dire need.

“It becomes a difficult vicious circle that I’m seeing most stations in with not having members of staff,” explains Nathan, vice-chair of the Welsh Community Radio Network alongside co-founding UKCRN. “It makes it really hard to sustain the station because paying your own bills or your day job takes priority over running your radio station.”

Donations also present a crucial alternative funding source. “You can’t put radio behind a paywall because it’s free to consume,” says UKCRN’s director Martin. “So I think there is an untapped opportunity to try and facilitate audience support.”

Aradhna Tayal Leach, managing director of UK audio charity Radio Academy, advises stations to diversify income streams and harness social media and online platforms. “Grants are becoming harder and harder to secure,” says Aradhna. “Government funding has dropped. Nobody can really rely on one single source of funding.”

New Measures to boost the UK Community Radio Landscape

On December 10, 2024, the DCMS announced new measures to generate growth and greater financial sustainability in community radio. These amendments will come into effect in April 2025, and include the removal of the £15,000 advertising and sponsorship limit for the majority of community stations, and the renewal of over 300 community radio stations licenses for a further ten years.

Commenting on the new measures, Stephanie Peacock, Minister for Sport, Media, Civil Society and Youth, said they were “a clear signal that this government has community radio’s back and we want it to grow and thrive for years to come.”

While these measures will allow stations to generate more money to reinvest in their operations, UKCRN campaigners are now asking for new rounds of analogue licensing and have long demanded for a rise in the Community Radio Fund.

Martin, who is also Station Manager at NLive Radio in Northampton, cites the “final death” of local radio and changes to local BBC programming as two major shifts in the radio landscape. “In the last 15 years, more and more local news has happened within community radio,” he says of the sector’s burgeoning role.

Who Is Tuning Into Community Radio?

“Community ought to be the future, but it needs to be done well,” says media transformation specialist and radio broadcaster Chrissie Pollard. The former BBC radio and TV presenter has decades of experience on and off the mic, and currently volunteers as a presenter on Dorset’s Forest FM.

Pollard argues that Ofcom is equally held back by a fear of commercial stations, who may be threatened if community stations receive more funding and advertising. “Community radio has no idea if it has a big audience or a little audience. And I do think that’s because of Ofcom – they won’t do it because of upsetting the commercial stations.”

RAJAR’s listings of audience figures could provide a crucial insight into listener rates for community stations and their funders, and is readily used by BBC and commercial radio stations. In their latest sector-wide national report, RAJAR found that 87 per cent of the UK’s adult population are tuning in to their selected radio stations.

BBC Local radio received just 4.6 per cent of the weekly listening share in its area, but its weekly reach is at its highest level since September 2023. While not yet overtaking BBC figures, local commercial radio nonetheless accounted for 27.2 per cent of the national listening share each week.

Voice FM in Southampton is one of the only RAJAR-listed community stations, clocking in an average of 10.4 hours a week per listener as per RAJAR’s latest quarterly listening report.

But RAJAR is inaccessible to most community stations, explains Nathan, who is also operations director and host of a community radio station, Bro Radio, which broadcasts through the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. He estimates that a RAJAR subscription to track listener rates would amount to anywhere between £10-12,000, something which community stations on an income of about £30,000 can rarely justify.

BBC Local Radio Feels the Squeeze

Once the hub for local radio, the BBC’s cuts to its local stations have been keenly felt throughout the industry. Of the total license fee, MPs in support of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) found that just £7.60 is spent on local radio.

A BBC spokesperson announced last September that they “expected to see an overall reduction of around 500 BBC public service roles by March 2026.” As the BBC enters negotiations with the government over the future of the licence fee after the end of the current charter period in 2027, the role of local radio will once again be reconfigured.

Chris Burns, Controller of Local Audio Commissioning at BBC England, says they have invested more in online platforms to augment the offer of BBC Local Radio. Despite widespread cuts, local radio remains important to the BBC. “Your local radio station is your front door to the rest of the BBC,” adds Burns.

Burns says the BBC works closely with the Community Media Association and local stations: “They are much more localized than we can ever be. So I think we can both be good partners for each other.”

The BBC’s “worrying approach” of cuts in recent years has nonetheless significantly reduced the breadth of programmes offered, argues Laura Davison, NUJ’s general secretary. Last year’s ’Keep BBC Radio Local’ campaign, led by the NUJ, garnered widespread support from MPs across party lines and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

“We continue to engage with the broadcaster over our concerns and have vocalised our opposition to proposals of new digital stations using funding by licence-fee payers,” says Laura. “To thrive, local radio requires greater investment and commitments to ensure its sustainability and accessibility by all those who trust its journalism.”

What Will The Future Of Community Radio Look Like?

A lack of legacy planning cripples community stations. In the wake of closures including Hermitage FM and Carillon Radio in North West Leicestershire, Gloucestershire’s Severn FM, and Skyline Gold in South Hampshire, it is the retirement of long running small teams which indicates that there is no one else left to keep the programmes on air.

To ensure that a community radio can progress to the next generation and continue to be a “training ground” for aspiring radio journalists, researchers highlight the widening ability of a station’s programmes. By combining podcasting, social media promotion and presence on local DAB platforms, a community station will aim to reach a wider demographic beyond the traditional, older-skewing radio owners and commuters on their car journeys.

Rod Maxwell, presenter of The Late Late Lunch Show at Radio Alty in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, looks positively towards the future of community radio, “as long as there are people who have got the time and the commitment to making local community radio work,” he says. “But it’s exactly the same as if you’re running any voluntary group in your area.”

“It relies on those people who are working, sometimes full time jobs, but for no money,” adds Rod. “You need enough of the community around you to support you and to help fund it.”