Apply for a Community Radio licence

Applications for the first wave of Community Radio licences were invited in September 2004. Ofcom received 194 applications and awarded 107 licenses in this round. The regulator completed the first round of Community Radio licensing on 17 May 2007

On 13 July, Ofcom published its plans for the second round of Community Radio licensing. Ofcom has decided that it would be more appropriate to invite applications for the second round of licensing for Community Radio on a region-by-region basis. It is believed that this approach would enable the regulator to deal with a large volume of applications in a timely manner.

To help prepare for the second round of licensing, Ofcom invited groups interested in applying for a community radio licence to send a ‘letter of intent’. The demand and enthusiasm for Community Radio continues to be high and by the closing date in April 2006 the regulator had received over 180 such letters from all over the United Kingdom.

Working with its partners, the CMA has developed a comprehensive online resource for groups applying to Ofcom's second round of Community Radio licensing with information, analysis, advice and support. Check the CMA’s GetYourLicence website for updates.

Ofcom published a draft timetable which sets out the regions, and the order in which it proposes to invite applications. For each region, the period between the invitation of applications and closing-date will be 12 weeks:

	Region	Expected date for inviting applications	Closing date for applications
1.	Southwest England and South Wales	Wednesday 16 August	Tuesday 7 November
2.	Scotland and Northern Ireland	Wednesday 25 October	Tuesday 16 January 2007
3.	North and North East England (incl North Yorkshire)	Wednesday 3 January 2007	Tuesday 27 March 2007
4.	West and South Yorkshire and the Humber	Wednesday 4 April 2007	Tuesday 26 June 2007
5.	North Wales and Northwest England	To be decided	To be decided
6.	West Midlands, East Midlands and Lincolnshire	To be decided	To be decided
7.	East and Southeast England	To be decided	To be decided

The revised application form and accompanying notes of guidance were published, alongside the first invitation for applications, on 16 August 2006.

The full statement about the second round is available on the Ofcom website.

Please note, a Community Radio Licence cannotbe granted if the proposed service will overlap by 50% or morewith an existing local commercial service which has a potentialadult audience of 50,000 persons or less. This restriction iscontained in the Community Order2004.

Further information about applying for a licenceis available on the CommunityRadio pages on Ofcom's website.

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