POSTBAG

Dear Licence Holder,

We are writing to you again as we became aware that two of the hyperlinks in our previous email did not work. The links to the Final Decision and EMF compliance flowchart have now been corrected. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

As stated in our previous correspondence, we are writing to make you aware of some important changes to your radiocommunications licence(s) issued by Ofcom. The changes mean you may now need to take action to make sure your radio equipment complies with a new licence condition to protect the general public from exposure to Electromagnetic fields (EMF).

We wrote to you in March this year to let you know we were proposing these changes. They apply to virtually all licence holders. We gave licensees until 18 April to submit any representations they wanted to make about the changes. We have listened to licensees’ concerns and made some changes to the new licence condition and guidance document as a result.

Full details of our Final Decision are published on our website. The Decision means your licence has now been changed to include a requirement to comply with internationally recognised limits on EMF exposure.

Alongside the Final Decision we have published Guidance on what you should do to ensure compliance. We have also produced a simple EMF compliance flowchart which tells you whether or not you need to take action and, if you do, what action is needed.

To help further, we will also shortly publish an updated version of our on-line calculator which you can use to work out an appropriate compliance distance for your equipment.  We are also preparing a new simplified version of the full Guidance, plus specific advice for holders of amateur, ship radio and aeronautical licences. We expect to publish these documents on our website by 8 June.

All documents – plus other relevant information – can be found on a dedicated EMF webpage.

Licensees will have the following time periods to make sure they have up-to-date records in place:

a) Until 18 November 2021 for any equipment which operates on frequencies at or above 110 MHz.
b) Until 18 May 2022 for any equipment which operates on frequencies above 10 MHz but below 110 MHz.
c) Until 18 November 2022 for any equipment which operates on frequencies at or below 10 MHz.

To view and download your new terms, conditions and limitations please click the appropriate link below:

Amateur Radio Licence Terms, Conditions and Limitations

Ship Radio and Ship Portable Radio Licence Terms, Conditions and Limitations

Please note: if we make any further changes to licences in future, we may not contact licensees individually. For that reason we urge all licensees to subscribe to email spectrum updates by going to this page on our website.

If you have any questions about this change and what it means for you, further information can be found on the dedicated EMF webpage using the address provided above.

Yours faithfully,

Ofcom