Annual Report
Of The Trustees
2024
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
Overview.
The Trustees of Bedrock Radio have compiled a report of station activities over the last 12-month period, including annual accounts.
Reporting period: 01.02.2024 to 31.01.2025.
Our Charity.
Bedrock Radio is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), registered with the Charity Commission of England & Wales on 29th October 2018 with Charity number: 1180476, we are the successor to unincorporated charity bedrock formerly registered; 1094330 in June 2002.
Bedrock Radio is run entirely by a membership volunteers, with no paid staff.
The CIO is governed by a constitution, supported with associated policies, that is managed by the charity trustees who are elected by CIO membership. The trustees oversee the daily operations of Bedrock Radio, acting in best interest of the CIO and supporting its volunteers to further the charitable objectives.
In 2023 Bedrock radio where successful in securing a Community Digital Sound Programme Service (C-DSP) licence from The Office of Communications (Ofcom), ahead of the new ultra-local small-scale DAB+ macro broadcast area, which will cover the North East London and South West Essex region.
Charitable Objective of the CIO
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.
Key Commitments with Ofcom
Key commitments (known as a character of service) are agreed with regulator Ofcom and provide a condition of licencing of the nature of community service we provide as a C-DSP service.
Description of character of service:
Bedrock Radio is a radio service intended to serve People using healthcare services, and healthcare staff. Targeting those with sickness, poor health, and long-term conditions, who are users of health services such as Hospitals, units, clinics, residential homes, and similar institutions and for patients receiving community care, in East London and South Essex.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
Trustee Reports & Accounts
Trustee Board 2024: Mat Watson Station Manager | Chris Deighton Secretary | Lee Howe Engineering Beverley Stroud Treasurer & Fundraising | Gill Rowley Admin Support
Introduction.
2024 has been a year of celebration for Bedrock Radio, as we marked our 60-year heritage in Hospital Radio, while the current iteration of our charity as a CIO maybe new, our history has been full of merges, relaunches, relocations and even some rivalry. Allowing us to be here today proudly serving the community.
Bedrock Radio currently have approximately 20 volunteers, of which around 50% are on-air over the week, While we are broadcasting 24 hours a day to the hospitals and online, we have had a slight decline in presenters on-air, which began started conversations around scheduling and allocations in late 2024.
Our Ward Radio system at Queen’s hospital is very much in demand, with regular requests for radios and expansions to various departments, we have continued a positive trend of having long listening hours throughout 2024. It has been quite uplifting walking onto a ward and hearing our radios playing. Funding remains the biggest obstacle to invest in more radios, Since the system was introduced, we acquired around 40 radios – of which at least seven of our radios have gone missing from the hospital. Meanwhile, at Goodmayes, we have performed very poorly not having anyone visiting the site for the entire year. This is something we are really have let ourselves down on, trustees are aware of technical issues that may have developed on-site, which we must address to improve our presence on this site.
We are proudly playing on the speakers throughout Whipps Cross Hospital, although some minor technical issues beyond our control, which we believe the fault of the local mobile 4G/5G mast. However, we did manage to drop magazines to the site, and re-secure some of the rooms after an internal door was found unsecured.
Ofcom finally announced after a delay (partly caused by snap-elections) that east London and Essex Digital, who we wrote supporting letters for, where awarded to operate the SSDAB Multiplex for Northeast London and Southwest Essex. The SSDAB transmission area is expected to launch in 2025, which we hope Bedrock Radio will join from launch to provide a much broader community health and wellbeing radio service broadcasting on DAB+, along with existing broadcast methods of Ward radios, Bedrock App and online via our website.
Volunteer Membership.
In 2023 number of changes occurred to the recruitment process and most of 2024 has been spent getting used to these changes. Most notably how much longer it is taking to on-board volunteers.
There advantages to the new process, which ensures all volunteers have complete all required paperwork and have had the relevant up-to-date information before being handed back to us, the process also means Bedrock no longer handle the sensitive personal documents required for checks – sort of removing the ‘Middle Man’ in this process and reducing our risks in handling sensitive documents (We have policies and practices in place) meaning Trustees have been able to focus more on Recuitment, applications and interview stages.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
The biggest disadvantage is the process is slower that we would prefer and requires our volunteer applicants to be more pro-active in attending the seminar stages and completing relevant documents with the Trust.
Overall the process remains robust and throughout 2024, we have continued to receive a few enquires online, many from the local area. Unusually we have begun receiving application from further afield; Kent, Hertfordshire, and South London to name a few – either our online search engine terms are strong, or the more local hospital radio services have out-dated information online or are not being as responsive as us. While we have no issue from taking volunteers from outside the local area, we do check before proceeding their application if they are able to get to our studios in Romford.
In a policy review in 2024 Trustees proposed a new ‘Volunteer Standards Policy’ to replace the ‘Rules of Conduct’ with new sections on raising concerns, confidentiality, training, and feedback along with an updated membership rules to reflect updates procedures at the Hospital.
Two radical actions were also taken by Trustees in 2024:
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1) Annual Subscription (Subs) fees to become £0.00p
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2) Removal of all inactive members.
Annual Subs - why £0 and not free? This allows us to keep the default wording in place in the membership policy, should we decide to re-introduce a subscription at a later date, but also ask volunteers if they would rather make donation (with gift aid) where possible to support Bedrock instead.
Inactive Members – Approximately eight people were removed for not responding to our direct and group communications nor have attended any meetings in the past 6 to 12 months. This action is in line with our Membership Policy; however, this action was relaxed during the pandemic, having resumed full normal service for a couple of years now, it was deemed necessary to bring this process back into action.
At the time of drafting this report, we have approximately 20 volunteers on file.
Two socials took place for members to meet and socialise with other volunteers these where; The 60[th] Celebration party at a local Pub and the Christmas Meal. We aim to have two Bedrock socials in 2025 where possible.
On-Air
Throughout 2024 we have continued to give presenters the option of presenting in the studio, or remotely. There are no right or wrong options here, what comes out of the radio matters most!
Our biggest feature was our 60 years’ celebration, with a special two-day broadcast, full of past and present volunteers from our founding hospital radio services Harold Wood, Radio Rush Green, Radio 174, Oldchurch and Goodmayes, we managed to create a two-part podcast, which can be heard on our website.
We started 2024 with good number of programmes, with at least a couple of local (Live or Voice Tracked) programmes per day, this fluctuated quite a bit throughout the year as presenter’s reliability and commitment dropping notably.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
To the point we have ended with year with many daytimes consisting of a rolling jukebox of music and news updates.
In December it was decided that in 2025 we would be starting with a series of ‘Presenter Meetings’ to look at changing our schedule to boost reliability before we launch on DAB, as we need a schedule that works for volunteers and importantly the station.
We are looking to securing programme sponsorships and light advertising once launched on DAB to help fund the services additional fees, but this requires reliable presenters to commit to programmes week on week to make this possible.
On-Air we have continued to provide a range of local, community news sourced mostly from local newspapers, we have tested using some ‘AI Voices’ to read our scripts and provide alternative voices to our regular on-air presenters, some results have been interesting to say the least but has provided a useful tool. As local news has remained a strong regular feature on-air. Members interested in helping on the community news desk should talk to a trustee.
Many of the Bank Holidays and special days run additional or special programmes with regular themes such as Back to the 80s, Timeless Classics Day and 80s vs 90s making their annual comebacks and provide a nice feature, it is hoped we may be able to get some of these sponsored in the near future.
We were able to take the Bedrock Roadshow out to a few events this year across Hornchurch, Upminster, Collier Row and Elm Park. Of which two we successfully did outside broadcasts back to the studio. Although recent local Council cutbacks resulted in us attending less Christmas events, therefore generating less income from these popular events. It is anticipated the Bedrock Roadshow will be out again in 2025, and we are looking for more opportunities to do outside broadcasts to help promote the station when DAB arrives.
We haven’t been without faults in 2024 - our silence alarm has trigged one too many times for our liking, some of this has been due to silly faults and equipment failures, as part of our mitigation measures, an additional layer of failover has been installed in the form an online ‘Auto DJ’ which activates if connection between the studio and the streaming servers are lost.
We also had a number of presenter errors, whereby procedures have not been followed in either transferring playout control, or others not re-setting the desk for the next user to use. However, some training refreshers have helped individuals, and we will look to offer more of these moving forward.
Publicity & Fundraising
As part of 60 years celebration a new Bedrock Radio Magazine was published, with thanks to Hospital Radio Publications, we are grateful to those advertisers who have supported this edition.
We have been steadily getting through our supply and invested in a few magazine holders which there is one at Queen’s, Whipps Cross and a couple of local clinics. There are a still a few boxes of magazines we need to distribute far and wide. – Once complete we can look towards our next publication.
2024 also saw the Launch of the Havering Local Lottery, which Bedrock is a beneficiary of, and we have been promoting as supporters have a chance each week to win £25,000 plus other prizes every month.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
Our socials go through peaks and being updated, this is partly to do with changes in X (Formally Twitter) API tools and Facebook Pages structure, meaning Myriad is unable to integrate with either of them properly. In January 2025 we have setup a Bedrock Radio BlueSky Social account, as Myriad now integrates with it, how popular this will be is unknown being a new platform.
The Aiir Platform has proven useful with the socials, as we are able to post to multiple platforms from one location, including scheduling posts. It has been great to see presenters using this more and encouraging listeners to use the App to listen and contact the studio. We are sure this will get used more when we launch on DAB.
In 2025 I would encourage more volunteers to interact with Bedrock’s socials to promote programmes & events tagging the station accounts too, it is helpful in boosting our profiles.
We have not used much of Google ‘s ’Ad-Grants' scheme, this year, nor have done any advertising, partly as we have not needed to, but also to preserve our funds. However, we intend to allocate a small amount of advertising funds to promote our launch on DAB when it happens in 2025.
Pre-covid Bedrock used to have a fundraising stall in the atrium and a book trolley that was taken around the wards by volunteers. Due to infection control we had to stop these activities. The trust is still not allowing stalls in the atrium but have agreed that we may resume taking the trolley around the wards. Trustees have reviewed our book volunteer policy and are currently approaching Havering Volunteer Service to see if they can help us recruit 4-6 new volunteers to resume taking the trolley around the wards. If we were able to do two rounds a week and make £10 each time you can see how this could easily be worth £1000 a year to Bedrock. These volunteers could also check the hospital radios to make sure that they are switched on and report faults to trustees (a job currently only undertaken by a limited number of trustees at present) as well as collect requests another job we currently do not do.
Finances:
We’ve just about covered running costs if anything having a small loss this year.
We updated the branding on our chained collection tins and distributed three into the local area, Ma Bakers, The Fruit Hut, and Wheatsheaf Pub all agreed to have a Bedrock Radio Tin, which is a good start on this passive collection method. We have more tins to distribute with willing local businesses.
On subject of tins, we performed our first Tin Shake / Bucket Collection in over five years, Although the weather was not on our side being a very windy, cold December day we raised £120 at Tesco Roneo Corner. We aim to have at least a couple of tin-shakes per year where possible.
The Christmas Roadshows in 2024 raised £420 as we attended Upminster, Elm Park, and Collier Row. We are grateful that Havering Council worked with us, despite their own fanatical situation.
A former Bedrock Volunteer had secured us a grant from the Royal Bank of Canada, we thank her for thinking of us and nominating Bedrock Radio for this generous donation.
The Havering Local Lottery launched in 2024, we have a few supporters playing with our referral link (lottery.bedrock.radio) From August to January we have raised over £150 from the scheme, The more players we have, the more our donations we receive (50p of every £1 played comes to us).
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
EasyFundraising has also proven to be a steady stalwart of our fundraising with regular donations coming in from the platform. These small donations are certainly adding up, we’re averaging around £30 a quarter donation!
We encourage all members, friends, and their families to use our referral links (easy.bedrock.radio)
Sadly, Trustees were unable to secure any sponsors on-air or for the ward radios this year, with around 7 radios going missing we have not raised any money to replace them, however a run of plug replacements has cost us another £100 this year. Although since our re-distribution of radios less plugs are being broken.
Disappointingly, we were forced to cancel our Quiz Night, this was due to underwhelming ticket sales, we postponed until 2025 but are working with the venue to get a better date, as it was felt a midweek ‘school night’ was a hard sell to many. We still aim to have two quiz or events nights one supported by a local venue and one that Bedrock host ourselves.
Furthermore, our live singer night at the Romford Legion was cancelled as no tickets were sold, this was very disappointing for us, The December General Meeting it was debated if a band would be better than a solo singer? We will look to have a live music night in 2025.
We welcomed a slight reduction in our insurance bill this year from Policy Bee, sadly, BOnline informed us that Openreach where increases the costs of ADSL lines – Which is very unfair as we have no other option as no Fibre alternative has been installed at Queen’s – however, BOnline did us a new deal as we’ve been such a loyal customer.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
Fiscal breakdown on the following pages;
2024 – Bedrock Radio Accounts
Bedrock Radio - Registered Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) 1180476 Year Ended 31 January 2025
Receipts and Payments
| Year Ended 31 January 2025 Receipts and Payments |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Income | |||
| Donations | 2094.86 | ||
| Fundraising | 636.54 | ||
| Members subs | 0.00 | ||
| Other | 9.91 | ||
| ----------- | |||
| Total Receipts | 2741.31 | ||
| Expenditure | |||
| Office Supplies | 0.00 | ||
| Phone/Postage | 1530.45 | ||
| Small components | 1095.12 | ||
| Repairs | 746.27 | ||
| Fees and Licences | 1249.27 | ||
| Advertising and Publicity | 0.00 | ||
| Monthly Bank Charges | 60.00 | ||
| Broadcasting Expenses | 1068.62 | ||
| Fundraising Expenses | 87.80 | ||
| Other | 120.34 | ||
| ----------- | |||
| Total Expenses | 5957.87 | ||
| Balances: | 2024-2025 | ||
| 1stFeb 2024 | 31stJan 2025 | ||
| Opening | Closing | ||
| Current Account | 12,288.90 | 8235.83 | |
| Cash | 0.00 | 0.00 | |
| Floats | 0.00 | 0.00 | |
| ----------- | ----------- | ||
| Total | 12,288.90 | 8235.83 | |
| Surplus | |||
| Deficit | 4053.07 |
Simplified Accounts
Income: £2741.31 Expenditure: £5957.87
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
Engineering:
2024 provided much of the same, keeping us busy, not for the right reasons.
We received a donation of a new Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) for the server room, thanks to stakeholders who have helped us acquire it.
Myriad 6 has received a number of updates, with new features and more functionality and stability.
In 2023, you may recall we installed a 5G router to speed up general ‘internetting’ while it’s not perfect, it is proven helpful and provided a much superior speed. Part of this install being successful has allowed us in 2024 to decommission one of our two ADSL lines, as mentioned earlier BOnline have given us a new deal on the remaining line, which is being used exclusively for streaming, as we need to ensure a stable connection is maintained, especially for our future on DAB.
The AutoDJ failover unfortunately was used this year during a planned hospital power test, our ADSL modem went offline and refused to come back, meaning we had to order a new one. However, with a new modem and the UPS installed this problem appears to have eliminated itself.
The AutoDJ proved itself particularly useful externally, we have replicated it internally, with the Ward Radios system using this great bit of software.
Towards the end of 2024 / Early 2025 we began having problems with Remote Voice Tracking, while nothing has changed internally, we believe the secure routing that connects presenters to RVT is being blocked by 5G network, and we’re not sure why. Rendering RVT unusable, Therefore Presenters have been asked to come into the studio to record their shows, we are scheduling three weeks in advance to help presenters record forward a couple of weeks.
We also need to start migrating all our PCs onto Windows 11, as support for Windows 10 is being withdrawn. We again thank EduNetICT for their continued support in 2024.
In 2025 there are a number of checks we need to perform to ensure we are ‘DAB Ready’ and we are meeting all legal requirements.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
Our assets in hospitals:
Queens: Ward radio demand keeps growing, although approximately seven radios have gone missing, presumed stolen. Positively, our streaming monitor has recorded impressive listening figures with most radios being used for many hours every day. Even the nearby Tactical team and discharge lounges have our radios and are regular listeners - We are looking at other nearby locations that may benefit in some small way. We consider the requests from other departments, However, without funding there will be limited growth. Trustees decided to focus most of our radio deployment onto specific wards, based on data from our listening figures (usage and duration), revealed by far we had most usage / listeners across the second floor on Amber, Sahara, and Ocean wards. This redeployment has resulted in improvements to our ward visiting, with most of our radios showing as online, with the bonus of less bulk maintenance.
The Amplifier in the food court decided to breakdown, although it has been online consistently for around 12 years now, a new amp was sourced and installed the catering staff where severely “ missing our tunes ”.
No progress was made on investigations into infrastructure for a ward radio system at King George Hospital, However, this area will be covered when DAB launches in 2025, ideas have been floated about finding a DAB
Goodmayes:
There has been no action or involvement from Bedrock at Goodmayes throughout all 2024.
We are disappointed in our own inaction at the site, to take accountability for our poor performance, a plan is being formulated to get our engineers attend this site early 2025 to see what is going on technically, following this we must then dispatch request collectors back promptly.
A Trustee will be appointed become the point of contact and become accountable with Goodmayes & NELFT to improve the patients (& staffs) listening experience and will monitor our activities here.
Like King George, this could be a site where DAB also allows us to improve services by covering more areas, but we must ensure we are actively visiting the site.
Whipps Cross:
We have managed a couple of visits to Whipps Cross as where we were not satisfied the rooms where fully secure, as evidence showed someone had been able to access the former WXHR studios to undertake hospital maintenance without our knowledge. We have taken provisions to prevent this.
Our equipment remains untouched, with the speakers playing loud and clear throughout. Although the minor 5G mast issues persist, these are beyond our control and is mobile infrastructure issue.
Our biggest obstacle remains communication from Barts Health Trust, we have made contacts and sent emails out, with the response rate being disappointingly slow, and others confusing us with another hospital radio station whose service is sporadic in comparison to ours.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
We did take some magazines to Whipps Cross and places these around public areas to boost awareness of Bedrock Radio at this location.
Presently we do not know if the DAB signal will reach here based on the limited coverage maps, we have seen, however it is likely our signal will cover the Plaistow Area
Online: Our Mobile App had an interesting issue this year, where we had to re-register with the Google Play store due to an administration error, the app was re-issued in May 2024, meaning we have lost all previous download data – That being said since May to January 2024 Google Play store has reported; 60 downloads, all of these would be new users as the app was re-listed and deemed as new.
January 2024 to January 2025 on Apple App store has reported 150 downloads – Of which 117 of these are first-time downloads (new users).
Online & Mobile listening we are maintaining a small but steady number of daily listeners, with notable peaks in live shows.
Again, our main website servers have increased in cost, while it is still affordable, we continue to monitor this, we have also purchased an additional domain name to add to our online portfolio– bedrockradio.co.uk
We have had around 7600 views of our website. With a notable spike in visits and listening August.
And Finally
2024 we celebrated 60 years of Hospital Radio in the local area, where our founding station Warley Hospital Radio started in February 1964. Celebrations were enjoyed by all, with many former volunteered impressed with how far we have come and our ambitious plans for 2025.
The advent of the small-scale DAB will allow us to better serve and improve our coverage of other locations such as King George and Goodmayes Hospitals and outreach many clinics locally. This will only be possible with the support of our volunteers and local businesses to help make it a success.
Trustees would like to offer a Thank You to all volunteers, the community and Edunet ICT for their support and dedication to Bedrock Radio.
Bedrock Radio
Community health and hospital radio for the health community across East London and South Essex.
We are a charity, run entirely by volunteers, providing entertainment, and promoting a healthy lifestyle to patients, staff, and the local area and in local hospitals.
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476
www.bedrockradio.org.uk
www.bedrock.radio | www.bedrockradio.co.uk | www.hospital-radio.org
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BEDROCK RADIO | ANNUAL REPORT 2024
| Registered Charity 1180476