The BBC has launched this year's Frank Gillard Awards 2007, honouring achievement in local radio.

The event, now in its eighth year, will also mark forty years since the BBC began its local radio services, when BBC Radio Leicester began broadcasting in November 1967.

The BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson will host the prize-giving event in September. Radio Five Live presenters Jane Garvey and Simon Mayo, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze presenter Michael Buerk and journalist Kate Adie are among those co-presenting the awards.

David Holdsworth, acting controller, BBC English Regions, said: "These awards reflect the rich and varied way that local radio serves local communities across the country, but this year's event will be particularly special as we celebrate 40 years of what Frank Gillard set up as 'the people's radio'."

The awards themselves are miniature busts of the founder of BBC Local Radio, Frank Gillard, who died in 1998.

Four Outstanding Contribution awards will be handed out, as well as prizes including Best Breakfast Programme, Original Journalism, Interactivity and Outside Broadcast.

The winners will be decided by thirty judges who include BBC local radio alumni John Inverdale, Adrian Chiles, Vijay Sharma, Lorna Clarke, and Richard Bilton, director of the Radio Academy, Trevor Dann, and the BBC Trust's Alison Hastings.

The deadline for entries is Friday July 13 2007.