Ofcom release totals for licences issued since April 6, 2020

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M3PIE
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Ofcom release totals for licences issued since April 6, 2020

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Ofcom release totals for licences issued since April 6, 2020
Ofcom have released figures for the number of amateur radio licences issued since April 6, 2020, when the RSGB introduced remotely invigilated online exams

On September 23, 2021, in response to a Freedom of Information request Ofcom said:

Thank you for your request for information about issuing amateur radio licences. We received this request on 2 September 2021 and have considered it under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You asked:
‘Could you provide the number of amateur radio licences issued since the examination process moved online due to the COVID19 pandemic? Would you be able to possibly break it down into foundation and intermediate licenses? Thank you.’

Our response
We have taken the date on which examinations moved online due to the pandemic as 6 April 2020, as stated on the Radio Society of Great Britain website. Please see the table below for a break down of newly issued licences since then.

3,648 Foundation
1,135 Intermediate
1,032 Full

Source https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/ ... ences-.pdf

Note the wording in Ofcom's reply indicates licences issued since April 6, 2020. This suggests the Full total is not be just those who have passed RI Online exams in that time but includes others.

Ofcom do not specifically say Individual licences so any new Club licences might be included in the total. It also raises the question - does a previous Full licence holder who has returned to the hobby after an absence of many years count, for Ofcom's administrative purposes, as a "newly issued licence"?

Given that on September 7, 2021 the RSGB reported 544 people had passed their Full licence it does suggest there were several hundred previous Full holders returning to the hobby.
You can submit a Freedom of Information request to Ofcom online at
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/new/ofcom
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Re: Ofcom release totals for licences issued since April 6, 2020

Post by paulears »

Why on earth would you want to? I was a full licence holder who returned to the hobby after a long lapse. At some point my 'presence' resulted in a -1, I assume that my re-licence would be a balancing +1. It's also insignificant and appears to show no trend, or other useful information. The only area of interest would be the total numbers in each licence class. Due to covid, any stats for the changed period would be viewed as a data change to be removed from any long term statistics - a blip, for want of a better word.

You put in an information request. Did you have a specific reason for requesting the data? I assume you wanted to compare it with the previous year to see if being at home brought in more members?

I'm a little unsure what conclusion your request produced? Compare and contrast is the usual reason, but you seem to just want the figures? I'm curious why?
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Re: Ofcom release totals for licences issued since April 6, 2020

Post by Admiral »

A better question might have been, 'how many complaints against licence holders have you received, and how many enforcement visits resulted from those complaints?'
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Re: Ofcom release totals for licences issued since April 6, 2020

Post by paulears »

A while back here, one of the port nav aids went mad and put out a low level carrier on the car key fob frequency. A nearby car park had scores of calls to the AA, and lots of vehicles towed, when they of course then behaved fine. The nearby Ford dealer got swamped with no fault found checks, but the car park was backing up. Once identified as interference, to a licence free band, OFCOM arrived and identified the source within a few hours. That was pretty good, I thought.
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