Crisis at New Style Radio

Birmingham and the UK's first Afro Caribbean community radio station, New Style Radio 98.7fm is under serious threat after radio staff and volunteer presenters were locked out of the Afro Caribbean Millennium Centre where the station is located in Winson Green, Birmingham. Radio staff were alerted to the the fact that all the locks had been changed at the centre when the programme controller tried to access the building on Saturday June 5th.

Current New Style Radio licence holders, the board of directors at the Afro Caribbean Millennium Centre were baffled by the unilateral decision of one of it's board members, Mr Alton Rufus Burnett to enforce the lockout. Fellow board member, Denzil Williams who was himself denied access to the building by Mr Burnett told police officers who were called to the scene that he could not understand why Mr Burnett had taken this course of action, "no lockout policy had been agreed by the board."

Radio station manager, Dennis Edwards who has been in charge at New Style Radio since it's inception in 2002 was infuriated after being called to the scene by a colleague. "This is absolutely ludicrous, internally everybody knows that there are unresolved issues between the board of the ACMC and the staff and volunteers at New Style Radio but for one despotic old man to dictate policy to our constituents is an absolute outrage. Besides not being able to undertake the work that I've been contracted to do, I have a lot of physical, personal and intellectual property in the building and I'm being denied access to it, I'm dumbfounded."

Mr Burnett who took the controversial decision to lock out the radio personnel was unavailable for comment but it seems that the dispute centres around the ACMC's decision to lay-off all radio staff. "The staff have contested the legitimacy of the laying off and have already taken legal action" said Mr Edwards, "so fo Mr Burnett to pre-empt a judicial outcome and take the law into his own hands is both presumptuous and premature to say the least."

In the meantime the majority of the station's seventy plus volunteer presenters are uniting behind the staff and are refusing to broadcast leaving the future of the UK's pioneering community radio station in serious doubt.