Annual Report
Of The Trustees
2023
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023
| Registered Charity 1180476
Contents
Overview. ......................................................................................................... 3 Our Charity. .......................................................................................................... 3 Charitable Objective of the CIO. .................................................................... 3 Trustee Reports & Accounts .......................................................................... 4 Volunteer Membership. ................................................................................... 5 Publicity & Promotion ....................................................................................... 6 Finances:................................................................................................................ 7 2022 – Bedrock Radio Accounts ..................................................................... 8 Engineering: ........................................................................................................ 9 And Finally ..................................................................................................... 12
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023
| Registered Charity 1180476
Overview.
The Trustees of Bedrock Radio have compiled a report of the station activities over the last 12-month period, including annual accounts.
Reporting period: 01.02.2023 to 31.01.2024.
Our Charity.
Bedrock Radio is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), registered with the Charity Commission of England & Wales No as number:1180476.
The CIO is run entirely by volunteers, who pay an annual membership subscription. Bedrock Radio is governed by the CIO Constitution and managed by a board of Trustees who are elected by the membership at the Annual General Meetings. Elected Trustees oversee the daily operations, acting in best interest of the CIO to further the charitable objectives.
Charitable Objective of the CIO.
In December 2022, members voted by resolution at a general meeting to amend the charitable objective wording, to broaden the charity’s overall service area. The charity commission of England and Wales approved the members approved objectives in February 2023.
1) The relief of sickness, poor health and old age amongst people living in East London, South Essex and immediate surrounding areas by providing a local broadcasting service for hospitals, residential homes and similar institutions, and for patients receiving community care;
2) The advancement of health and prevention or relief of sickness for the public benefit through the promotion of the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle, and the importance of maintaining good personal mental and physical health by (mainly, but not exclusively) the means of broadcasting health education messages to people living in East London, South Essex and immediate surrounding areas.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023 | Registered Charity 1180476
Trustee Reports & Accounts
Trustee Board 2023: Mat Watson Station Manager | Chris Deighton Secretary | Beverley Stroud Treasurer Lee Howe Engineering | Barry Felton Fundraising | Gill Rowley Admin
Introduction.
Welcome to this Annual Report looking back at 2023 at Bedrock Radio. 2023 has been a steady year for Bedrock.
Group meeting attendance has been suboptimal, it's been noted members are not always giving apologies if unable to attend meetings, with at least one meeting this year being outright cancelled, aside Trustees, only one member attended. Trustees have noted that virtual meetings had a higher attendance. Even higher than inperson & hybrid (Virtual & In-person) meetings. It was hoped that in-person meetings would enable volunteers to meet and socialise, as members had previously asked for opportunities to socialise. Moving forward, it's likely that general meetings will be held virtually continuing a mixture of weekdays and Sundays. Trustee Meetings will still have a mixture of both physical and virtual due to our need to collaborate.
Our Ward Radio system at Queen’s hospital has grown and is being very well received, with some fantastic listen hours being recorded. However, the biggest obstacle on this project has been funding, we have attempted to seek out grants but have been unsuccessful. It was hoped that we would be able to sell some sort of sponsorship, through advertising stickers on the sides of the radios, however this was never followed through.
Goodmayes still requires our attention, we have struggled to have any volunteer visit wards on a regular basis, nor has anyone else stepped up to the task when asked. This is something as an organisation we need to greatly improve on, patients in Goodmayes are often in hospital for long periods and are more likely to interact with our service, providing we are sending a ward visitor / request collector to them
We have also seen the first year of Bedrock broadcasting across Whipps Cross Hospital, although we have had technical issues to overcome, most of these have been resolved.
The big-ticket item for 2023 was Bedrock Radio securing a DAB broadcasting licence with Ofcom. We have managed to obtain a Community-Digital Sound Programme licence which will allow us to join on the North East London, South West Essex Multiplex, when it launches in 2024/2025 as a Community DAB Service.
Recruitment has been slow and steady, with a major change in process as we align our procedures more with BHRUT Volunteer Services, this has also resulted in a new Volunteers Conduct policy to be introduced from the forthcoming AGM
The Bedrock Roadshow again made some appearances locally in Collier Row, Elm Park, Hornchurch and Upminster providing vital promotion and raising much needed funds to keep us on-air. Our two quiz nights where every bit enjoyable but needed better promotion and members support.
Barry Felton has decided to step down from being a trustee. I am sure you will all join us in thanking Barry for all the hard work that he has put in as a trustee. Barry will continue to contribute to Bedrock in the future as a general member.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023 | Registered Charity 1180476
Volunteer Membership.
Throughout 2023, we have continued to collaborate and strengthen our relationship with Voluntary Services & Patient Experience at BHR Hospitals Trust (BHRUT). We have met the new members of staff in the department and have been sharing ideas and plans, of which we hope to work on in the coming year.
Our recruitment process has had a minor overhaul, following changes to BHRUT Volunteers recruitment process, we have aligned and amalgamated some elements of our recruitment processes. This includes volunteers now attending the Trusts volunteers' seminars, which covers important elements of safeguarding and other essential information.
The process (simplified): Volunteer application forms received by Bedrock and interviewed by Bedrock Trustees. The applicant is then passed to BHRUT Volunteer Services who will complete the Volunteer onboarding (Including DBS) with the Trust, on completion of on-boarding, they are handed back to Bedrock to commence our induction and training. They are then a volunteer of Bedrock.
Our recruitment process remains robust, with Trustees overseeing the process looking for applicants who have taken time to mention our values and objectives to show they have an understanding and show interest in furthering the charity, these are being prioritised over some of the short ’one sentence’ applications that have been received.
Volunteer recruitment remains steady we are averaging 28 members on our records; we hope this will increase slightly in 2024.
Several of our training materials were updated to reflect changes ahead of launching on DAB+ in 2024, it is planned nearer the launch date we will run volunteer seminars about being ’DAB Ready’. As there will be little room for error when broadcasting to a much larger audience.
We have had a slight reduction in programmes in 2023, due to commitment and availability of volunteers. It remains a long term aim to fill all weekday lunchtime shows with a Live or Voice Tracked presenters. We also still want to have local sport coverage on a Saturday Afternoon and fill a few more of our specialist show times in evenings and weekends.
There are presenters who enjoy the flexibility of voice tracking from home to fit around their other life commitments, whilst others like the ability to pop to the studio and escape reality for a few hours. There are no right or wrong options here, what comes out of the radio matters most! Using the training and resources provided by Bedrock, all presenters can produce great and maintain constant programming. Meeting both our charitable objectives and our Ofcom Key Commitments.
Unfortunately, the relationship between Bedrock Radio and the Havering Volunteer Centre has disintegrated. HVC do not seem willing to listen to Bedrock Trustees about how we wish to recruit members and what the responsibilities of our members would be. In past communications we have politely tried to point out our recruiting process to them highlighting why our process is a certain way Highlighting that ’one sentence answers’ on applications forms do not give us suitable information if the volunteer would be suitable fit or have desirable skills, in addition as we work with BHRUT for on-boarding they must be able to complete the safeguarding aspects.
We tried to raise the subject, only to receive a stroppy email from the HVC Manager saying that they no longer wished to have anything to do with us due to how ’inflexible’ Bedrock where being, as to our processes requiring a more complete application form, this situation is likely to remain until a staff change takes place at HVB, or they are willing to meet with us and understanding our processes.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023 | Registered Charity 1180476
Meanwhile, DAB is on the horizon in 2024 and is at the forefront of our minds and while there are no guarantees on how long we can financially sustain a digital radio service, we have been putting work into our on-air policies are in place, along with sponsorship packages, a refined music selection and updating our training materials. To try and give Bedrock Radio the best possible opportunity to succeed across the East London and South Essex area when the multiplex launches.
Publicity & Promotion
2023 We have tried to use social media more, continuing our efforts from last two years.
Many of our postings this past year have been around events (Quiz Nights, Christmas), Promoting EasyFundraising, and showcasing programmes plus how to listen in.
Upgrades to Myriad 6 has allowed us to re-integrate X (Twitter) back into our Social Posting on Myriad Playout. Which has allowed us to add social posts back into the live log,
A few presenters are using personal socials to promote programmes & events tagging the station accounts too, which has been very helpful in boosting our pages and profiles.
Towards the end of 2023, we’ve begun to sign up to Google‘s ’Ad-Grants' scheme, which allows non-profits to receive free advertising credits on the popular Google Ads online advertising platform.
As 2024 marks 60 years of Hospital Radio in (North) East London! We spend the last quarter of 2023 drafting a history article to form a new magazine that is coming together with our chosen publisher to mark the occasion and is due to arrive in 2024.
Disappointingly, we still have a few boxes of our old magazines, while many were given out at Christmas events, Trustees requested volunteers help to distribute these, sadly this help has not been forthcoming to deliver copies across the health community (Hospitals, Units, Clinics) or even onto the wards of the hospitals we’re located in!
It is unknown to Trustees why there has been such reluctance from our volunteers to help us on tasks such as magazines, wards visits' etc, which provide a way to promote Bedrock and help meet our charitable aims by interacting with patients.
Our Ward Radio’s at Queen’s are proving popular with more requests for radios in more areas. Over at Whipps Cross on a maintenance visit, we were able to attach some small stickers to the speakers (The ones we could reach) promoting ’Bedrock Radio’ playing throughout the hospital.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023 | Registered Charity 1180476
Finances:
Financially 2023 has been flat, we’ve just about covered running costs. We’ve not been able to build up the cash reserves to support the future of projects such as Ward Radios.
Trustees were unable to secure any sponsors for our ward radios this year, meaning any investment has been at cost to Bedrock from fundraising and existing funds. Unfortunately, the bad luck continued as all our grants applications where unsuccessful in 2023. We will try for new grants in 2024.
A handful of fundraising activities with Bedrock Roadshow including several Christmas events, However, we have been made aware Havering Council may not fund any festive events in 2024 due to their own severe budget cuts being made in 2023/4 as the council faces ”Bankruptcy”. We can only hope events run by the community ventures (town teams) go-ahead and we are able support them next year.
Trustees are eager to make 2024 a better fundraising year,
We are aiming to get some of our collection tins out into the community and have been discussing restarting a couple of collections (Tin Shakes) with a view to ensuring we have card acceptancy. Along with regular events such as Quiz nights. These can only succeed with support from our volunteers' base to help at these events. Without it a lot of effort from the organising Trustee is wasted, which is extremely disheartening to the individual, but also disadvantages the Charity when volunteers are not interested furthering the charities work.
EasyFundraising has proven to be popular this year, and provides a steady run of donations, we have continued to run on-air adverts & social media posts on this as it does make a small difference.
A JustGiving page was set up to crowdfund for the Ward Radio Project but has been underused and underpromoted, this needs to be revisited as the project is unable to progress due to the lack of funding for it.
As mentioned earlier, we have applied to the Google Ad-grants campaign to allow us to advertise & promote Bedrock Radio online better in 2024, with the expected DAB launch, we’re hoping to use the scheme to promote Bedrock on DAB, plus to promote things like our ward radio project.
Our new Ofcom licence will cost us £100 a year to maintain, Looking ahead to 2024 and our future on DAB+, It won’t come cheap! estimated costs so far suggest that it will cost £3600 in Music Licencing and Multiplex fees per year to sustain our DAB transmission, based on the accounts overleaf we can sustain this for a period, but will need to be proactive in seeking fundraising, advertising and sponsorship to operate our service for longer than a couple of years
As part of our Ofcom licencing there will be fiscal limits on broadcasting activities on our licenced DAB service, for instance we have a revenue cap of £15,000 that can be generated through advertising and sponsorship, However, no singular advertiser / source can contribute more than 50% of that total income (£7500). To be clear this will not affect our charitable activities of fundraising (Quiz nights, stalls, roadshows, collections, etc) grants or subscriptions, this is purely a cap for the DAB service.
It is intended we sell sponsorship and advertising to help cover broadcasting costs, using fundraising to cover other charitable activities (such as funding ward radios & the Bedrock App).
Unfortunately, the broadcast marathon was cancelled for a second year running because we were unable to secure enough participation from volunteers to make the event a success. This is disappointing as this event has proven popular and successful in the past with a guest and a full studio, donations from our ’Sponsor A Song’ often totalling more than £1000. Fiscal breakdown on the following pages;
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023
| Registered Charity 1180476
2023 – Bedrock Radio Accounts
Bedrock Radio - Registered Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) 1180476 Year Ended 31 January 2023
| Year Ended 31 January 2023 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Receipts and Payments | ||
| Income | ||
| Donations | 709.74 | |
| Fundraising | 959.48 | |
| Members subs | 125.00 | |
| Other | 603.75 | |
| ----------- | ||
| Total Receipts | 2397.97 | |
| Expenditure | ||
| Office Supplies | 0.00 | |
| Phone/Postage | 1385.34 | |
| Small components | 99.09 | |
| Repairs | 0.00 | |
| Fees and Licences | 1769.44 | |
| Advertising and Publicity | 0.00 | |
| Monthly Bank Charges | 60.00 | |
| Broadcasting Expenses | 2374.61 | |
| Fundraising Expenses | 40.00 | |
| Other | 25.00 | |
| ----------- | ||
| Total Expenses | 5753.48 | |
| Balances: | 2023-2024 | |
| 1stFeb 2023 | 31stJan 2024 | |
| Opening | Closing | |
| Current Account | 15,183.33 | 11,646.34 |
| Cash | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Floats | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| ----------- | ----------- | |
| Total | 15183.33 | 11646.34 |
| Surplus | ||
| Deficit | 3536.99 | |
| Simplified Accounts | ||
| Income: £2397.97 | Expenditure: £6181.92 |
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023 | Registered Charity 1180476
Engineering:
2023 has kept us busy in various ways.
A topic from 2022 that rolled into 2023 was our Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) replacement, as we publish the report a UPS has potentially been sourced for the server room, with possibly a second for the storeroom racks. Thanks to stakeholders who have helped us acquire these.
The studios received an upgrade to Myriad V6 - This latest iteration of Myriad brings extra tools and functionality, improving on V5 including improvements to Myriad Anywhere (for remote voice tracking).
The studio switching hardware & Handoff software was installed as planned, however the associated switching hardware wasn’t up-to the task, after diagnosing the issue with the manufacture the switching unit was retuned. Resulting in Myriad handing-off to another PC being implemented, but the studio mixing desk stays live (if in PGM Mode) but this does make the desk available for production (in AUD Mode). Another switching unit is available, so this project can be revisited in the future.
Our internal backups (NAS drives) suffered a major failure, whereby windows could not communicate with the storage system properly which resulting in Bedrock not having a server back up for almost 5 months! This resulted in Bedrock needing to invest in a new NAS hardware, which is backing up all our data, should the worse happen, we could restore our studio in a few hours.
EduNet ICT has continued to support Bedrock Radio and are helping develop and support us in various areas, Including donating a newer server that is being installed in February 2024, this will give us more resilience in our core operations and will slightly speed things up with newer hardware.
Our 5G Broadband is proving to be very useful, we will be looking at getting rid of one of our two of our ADSL lines as soon as they go out of contract. The remining ADSL line is being used exclusively for streaming Bedrock Radio as we need to ensure a stable connection is maintained, especially for our future on DAB.
We made some streaming changes; as EduNet is hosting a streaming server for us, which provides an ’Auto DJ’ functionality, should the studio internet connection ever fail or disconnect the Auto DJ will take over automatically, until the studio feed is restored.
We are looking at moving the Bedrock Gold stream to the EduNet streaming server, which would allow us to make a small yearly saving on other services.
The software running the ’Auto DJ’ has proven to be very efficient and have plans in 2024 to install it onto our Ward Radio Server for added protection.
As we move forward, we need to ensure that the technology we work with remains reliable with DAB on the horizon, we also need to ensure our internal and cloud services are being utilised to their full and best extent, making best use of our Microsoft 365 accounts for email, teams and SharePoint etc.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023 | Registered Charity 1180476
Our assets in hospitals:
Queens: Our Ward Radio system grew slightly in 2023, with approximately 40 radios in circulation across the wards, plus a radio in the Infusion Suite and Discharge Lounge. Towards the end of the year the radio monitoring had recorded many of the radios where in use for long periods, with some wards listening for 8-12 hours of use per day! However, the biggest setback on this project is funding, we have been unsuccessful with grants and finding sponsors and despite trying with distributors we are unable to get the costs any lower.
The start of the year we slumped in visiting the wards, which resulted in the radio system going into disarray, with 1/3 of all ward radios being offline, creating a dip in overall listeners, as faulty & damaged radios where not being reported or attended too.
A concerted effort was taken to start addressing this, with 10 radios being fixed in one weekend & redeployed to the wards.
Towards the end of the year and into early 2024 we have improved this, with regular ward visits to check the radios every couple of weeks.
Sadly at least 3 radios have been offline for approx. 12 months, which desperately need to be found, they represent a loss of approx. £300 loss which if unfound would need to be written off.
As a team, if were checking the wards properly around the time they first went offline, we may have been able to recover them sooner. It is hoped they are still in the hospital somewhere, just out of range of our network. We must continue throughout 2024 and beyond to keep our presence up on the wards & maintain our radio system, to avoid such significant losses.
Sadly, without securing any funding we have been unable to install our Wi-Fi to remaining wards and have focused on maintaining what we currently have – A common point of failure is the Micro USB Plugs on the radios, we believe common failures are caused by the radios be shoved against walls or being dropped breaking the connectors, plus the USB power cables are common with some mobile phones.
Through discussions with stakeholders, there may be a possibility of getting a similar system installed at King George, which is also in desperate need of a new entertainment system, we are monitoring what is happening to see what is possible, but this will need significant funding.
We keep looking for grants and sponsors to help fund this project, as it provides the key backbone of our Charity, if we are unable to make a success of community DAB licence, our Hosptial Radio service will still need to continue well into the future.
Goodmayes:
Unfortunately, our engineers haven't been able to check the system on-site either due to several factors. It’s hoped they will be able to assess our speaker system in the first quarter of 2024
We have sadly made little to no progress with restoring request collecting duties and maintaining a positive presence at the NELFT site. As previously mentioned, when the wider membership was asked to help with this, nobody stepped up. Trustees are trying to recruit some volunteers near to the hospital, or who actively want to request collect to visit the site, even initially on a monthly basis.
While there are many ambitions for this site and improvements to be identified on the speaker the system, the costing of such projects and ideas are the largest obstacle. We need to make more effort with this location in general.
We are looking to have a Trustee who becomes a point of contact with Goodmayes & NELFT to improve the patients (& staffs) listening experience, but also to seek funding for any upgrades and improvements.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023
| Registered Charity 1180476
Whipps Cross:
We experienced several issues with the streaming connection, we have checked on the site, made some changes and resolved many of the issues. It is possible, we need to replace the PC on-site as it’s believed this is creating one of the issues.
Former radio rooms are also not as secure as we would like, however our main area of focus is the technical room, and we hope to make some minor changes in 2024 to ensure our equipment remains safe on site.
Our biggest obstacle so far as been trying to communicate with Barts Health Trust, we have tried emails and socials via communications, volunteer experience, however we are struggling to get any meaningful contact with the Trust. Changes to Barts NHS Wi-Fi has resulted in broken links, meaning no radio service is easily accessible on NHS Wi-Fi, we have tried to raise this issue too, but this was also ignored.
Meanwhile, Bedrock Radio continues to play across the speakers at Whipps Cross and is checked periodically, so we are providing some sort of service to the Trust, which is better than other services are doing.
Online: Our Mobile App continues to be stable; majority of users are on the Apple iOS who make up around 65% of all users, however constant changes in terms & conditions on the app platforms are making it difficult to provide links to our donation sites, as the platforms increasingly want users to pay via their platforms (Apple Pay / GPay) which we are not signed up to.
Yet again, our main website has increased in cost, now at the £100 a year mark, while it’s still affordable we’re monitoring it as there are cheaper alternatives, we’re still receiving small, but steady number of clicks through from the NHS Wi-Fi across all locations, of which the majority have gone onto listening in. But this is comparatively low, when compared to the ward radios & their listening hours.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023
| Registered Charity 1180476
And Finally
2024 is promising to a year of celebration for Bedrock Radio.
Marking 60 years of Hospital Radio in the local area, where our founding station Warley Hospital Radio started in Feb 1964!
Hopefully Ofcom will be appointing the DAB Multiplex (Transmission) Operator in the first quarter of 2024, all being well we’re hoping things will be running by Mid to end of the 2024 we’ll be broadcasting to a further 1 million people across the health community
Together we’re creating a fantastic community health & hospital radio station. Thank You to all volunteers for the support and helping keep us on-air.
We have a lot of work ahead, and need as much support to get money coming in to ensure we have a good future on DAB Digital Radio
Although we must remember who our audience is and what our objectives and commitments are:
Bedrock radio is broadcast throughout Queen's, Goodmayes and Whipps Cross on speaker systems & ward radios. Plus, NHS Wi-Fi to all these and King George. (BHRUT in recently recorded over 300,000 in their Emergency Department at Queen’s) – They have recently asked for a radio this report was drafted.) The advent of SSDAB will allow us to better serve other locations such as King Georges, but also outreach many of the units and clinics locally.
Before we get our 'go live' date, we need to make a concerted effort to target the local health community which includes; clinics, units, surgeries, but also care homes, dentists, opticians and potentially private hospitals locally. Making it the best success we can.
Bedrock Radio
Bedrock is the Community health and hospital radio station serving the wider health community across East London and South Essex.
We are a charity who is run entirely by volunteers, we pride ourselves on providing entertainment and promoting a healthy lifestyle to patients, staff and the local area.
www.bedrockradio.org.uk
bedrock.radio | hospital-radio.org
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2023
| Registered Charity 1180476