COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Community Radio Stations:
Seek to honestly inform their listeners on the basis of information drawn from a diversity of sources and provide a right of reply to any person or organisation subject to serious misrepresentation.
Community Radio Charter for Europe. Point 6.

Community Relations is not the same as public relations. Community Relations seek to establish co-operative relationships with people, voluntary community organisations, statutory bodies and local business in our area.

A good Community Relations plan is one which encourages all of us to constantly appraise, both our own actions and those of others in relation to the service we are providing for our community.

Our Community Relations Plan will set out to achieve two things:
* Our awareness of the community’s needs and opinions of the station, and
* The community’s awareness of the facilities and services available to them through the station.

Community Relations is a two way dynamic. Us telling the community what our aspirations are, they telling us what they think of our efforts so far, us reacting positively to this information and the community responding with fresh insights….and so on. This will be done regularly through our evaluation workshops and listnership panels.

The purpose of our Community Relations programme is to ensure that NEARfm 90.3 is of benefit to our community and is getting the credit for it.

Our Community Relations Committee will undertake to monitor and implement the following actions:

* Everything that will ensure that all involved (Staff and Volunteers) realises that they are part of the Community Relations Plan.
* Actions to ensure that the station remains an influence for good within our community.
* Actions to ensure continuous Community Awareness of NEAR fm.
* Getting station people out to meet the community, and getting the community in to meet station personnel.
* Ensuring that this community development project meets the needs of all.

The Community Relations Plan will engage in practical ongoing evaluation of the following areas:

* How is the phone answered?
* How are visitors to the station received?
* How are queries and comments handled?
* How responsive is the station to requests for access?
* How much help is given in backup, monitoring and follow-up to specific programmes?

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