The June 2025 report Measuring the Social Gain of Community Radio, commissioned by Ofcom and prepared by Wavehill, is a welcome and necessary intervention. It offers a clear restatement and reformulation of the founding principle of UK community media — social gain — as defined in the Community Radio Order 2004 and reaffirmed in subsequent legislation. The report’s development of tools to help community radio stations evaluate their community impact is timely and constructive. However, its significance must be understood in the context of wider regulatory trends, long-standing sector challenges, and unresolved questions about the capacity of the current community media infrastructure to deliver on its statutory commitments.
A Principle Restated — But Long Underdeveloped
The principle that community radio exists not simply to broadcast, but to deliver meaningful public benefit to local communities, has been embedded in legislation for over two decades. Many organisations, researchers, and practitioners have worked for years to articulate and embed this principle in practice. Unfortunately, these efforts have often been marginalised or under-resourced, leading to fragmented evaluation practices and an absence of sector-wide development frameworks.
It is important to recognise that the absence of robust evaluation should not be confused with an absence of impact. As the report rightly states:
“UK-specific studies remain limited. Importantly, the lack of published evidence on the social gain delivered by UK community radio should not be seen as evidence of a lack of impact — rather, it highlights the need for more robust and consistent approaches to measurement.”
This is a crucial distinction and one that underlines the need for sustained and inclusive development of community-focussed communication infrastructures — not just tools, but governance, training, and support.
A Regulatory Retreat from Accountability
The wider regulatory context, however, reveals a concerning erosion of the social gain framework over recent years. Since 2016, Ofcom has removed the requirement for annual Social Gain Reports from community radio stations. This has significantly reduced the opportunities to assess whether licensees are meeting their statutory obligations. Moreover, licence renewal periods have been extended substantially, with some stations operating for many years without formal review of their public service remit.
A notable example of regulatory inertia is the case of Takeover Radio in Leicester. The charity operating the station ceased functioning over a year before its community radio licence was finally revoked by Ofcom. This delay suggests a lack of responsive monitoring systems, and it raises serious questions about the protection of the public interest when stations cease to deliver any meaningful service.
Licensing Gaps and Platform Disparities
At the same time, many new entrants — with credible, socially grounded proposals for community broadcasting — have been unable to obtain FM or AM licences. Instead, Ofcom has prioritised the rollout of Small-Scale DAB (SSDAB), which has led to the introduction of Community Digital Sound Programme (C-DSP) services. These services are only required to demonstrate “some” community benefit, a marked departure from the stronger “significant social gain” standard that applies to FM/AM community radio.
Moreover, C-DSP licensees are not subject to published or independently reviewed social gain reporting, making it difficult to assess the real community value these digital services are delivering. The shift to digital broadcasting is understandable, but the disparity in obligations and accountability risks weakening the very concept of community media.
Dilution of the Social Mission
The Community Media Association (CMA) and the UK Community Radio Network (UKCRN) — the two main sector bodies — have advocated for reduced regulatory burdens in recent years. While flexibility is valuable, these efforts have led to a significant weakening of the structural checks and balances that once underpinned community broadcasting.
Ofcom has subsequently removed many of the quantitative programming requirements from analogue community licences, including those related to original output, speech content, local music, and the use of minority languages. While these changes reduce administrative pressure, they also strip away important guarantees that stations will serve diverse and underrepresented communities. Even Radiocentre, representing commercial broadcasters, has warned that such deregulation risks “mission drift” — where stations, driven by sustainability concerns, orient themselves toward broader markets rather than their original communities of service.
Why Was This Report Necessary?
The publication of this report prompts a serious and uncomfortable question:
Are the current skills and structures within the community radio sector so underdeveloped that it is no longer clear how social gain can or should be delivered?
If, after more than twenty years of operation, there is still no established approach to evidencing social value, then the issue is not just one of capacity — it is one of sector design and strategic oversight. For local authorities, NHS bodies, civic partners, and funders who depend on these stations to deliver outreach, engagement, and education, this ambiguity is not acceptable. Community media must be held to a higher standard — not to punish, but to ensure purposeful, measurable, and meaningful public value.
A Moment for Inclusion and Renewal
Despite these concerns, the report presents an opportunity. The development of a shared framework for evidencing social impact is a necessary and constructive first step. But it must be followed by inclusive, sector-wide planning that brings new voices and expertise into the policy process.
There is now a compelling case for other civic society organisations with established expertise in social impact evaluation — including those working in participatory research, health communications, education outreach, and community and cultural development — to be included in shaping future community media policy. These organisations have long used sophisticated yet accessible methods to demonstrate community benefit. Their involvement would help bridge the gap between intent and impact in a way that honours the ethos of community media without compromising on accountability.
Measuring the Social Gain of Community Radio should be read not only as a technical report, but as a signal that the foundations of the sector must be rebuilt with greater clarity, transparency, and inclusion. If we are to retain the principle of social gain as the defining feature of community media, then we must now invest in the skills, tools, and governance systems that make this principle real.
This means opening up the conversation — not just to existing station operators and legacy institutions, but to a wider network of public interest professionals, policy developers, and social value practitioners. Only then can community media evolve into a robust, credible, and sustainable platform for civic engagement, communication equity, and local expression.
Let this report mark the start of that transition — and not another missed opportunity to ensure community media truly serves the people it claims to represent.