Ofcom has thrown its support behind a radical overhaul of the way radio is regulated in the UK.

In a new contribution to communication minister Lord Carter's Digital Britain report, the media regulator said that the creation of a "Local Impact Test" to regulate localness, as recommended in John Myers' recent report on the future of UK radio, was problematic due to "its lack of legal robustness, its cost to industry, its lack of regulatory certainty, and the construction and assessment of the market research".

However, Ofcom proposed three alternatives; one would see all stations having to provide local news hourly during daytime with local traffic and weather reports during peak times, but stations with a coverage area of under 700,000 adults having all other local programming requirements terminated. A second would create a new "Localness Charter", which Ofcom would base on "a more specific version" of its existing guidelines; under this arrangement, listeners would be invited to complain about "poor performance" with Ofcom carrying out reactive monitoring and a biennial assessment of the industry as a whole.

In a third plan, Ofcom would cut requirements for locally produced content from 10 hours per day to 7 and apply them within new "mini-regions" based on actual or potential DAB Digital Radio transmission areas, providing a path to digital switchover and flexibility "to create larger, more viable stations".

It noted that a hybrid of two or more of the options may be desirable.