DIGITAL RADIO SWITCHOVER WILL COST STOCKPORT £12.5 MILLION

12.03.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 21st Jul 2009

Hazel Grove MP Andrew Stunell has today warned of the hidden cost of the Digital Switchover after it emerged that replacing all analogue radios in Stockport will cost at least £12.5 million.

After the government announced its plans to extend the digital switchover to radio last month, listeners across the borough will now have to upgrade by 2015, or risk not being able to hear their favourite national stations and many local ones too. There are approximately 315,000 radios in use in Stockport, with over 100,000 of these in cars.

If all of these radios were to be replaced with digital ones, the cost to Stopfordians will be at least £12.5 million. Now, Andrew Stunell is calling on the government to ensure that they have a proper plan in place to manage the transition.

Commenting, Andrew Stunell said:

"The scale of this radio switchover project is vast. Whilst the 2015 target is ambitious, the transition will be hugely expensive, and hasn't been properly thought through by the government.

"Even if people go for the cheapest models, replacing this many analogue radios will cost the people of Stockport at least £12.5 million - a huge amount of money. Motorists will be particularly short-changed with the cheapest digital car radio three times the price of an indoor digital radio.

"Given that we are in a recession, and money is tight for many families, a digital radio may prove to be an unaffordable luxury for a lot of people. Financial help with the TV switchover is being provided for the least well off, and it's important that a similar scheme is introduced for the radio switchover.

"There is also the question of what to do with the unusable radios. The idea of the switchover itself is a good one, but the government have yet to come up with a coherent plan for how they are going to achieve it."

ENDS