Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many community radio stations have been awarded grants through the Community Radio Fund since its creation.

The Community Radio Fund was set up in 2005 and has an annual budget of £400,000, which is used to help support community radio stations across the UK. It is administered by Ofcom, and applications are assessed by an independent panel.

Information on all grants provided via the Community Radio Fund prior to the financial year 2020-21, including the recipients, the amount of funding awarded to each, and the posts and projects that have been supported, can be found on Ofcom’s website (from 2018 to date) and the National Archives (pre-2014 and 2014-2018).

For the financial year 2020-21, given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the sector, the Community Radio Fund is being used to provide stations with an emergency source of funding to help them to meet urgent liabilities and to keep themselves in business. Given the sensitive commercial nature of this situation, it has been agreed between the Government, Ofcom and the Community Media Association (the representative body for the sector) that the names of the supported stations and the amount that each has received will not be disclosed.