THE Forest's own radio station – Forest of Dean Community Radio – has become a victim of the recession. Unable to raise sufficient funding, the station will go off air at the end of the year.

The station's demise will bring to a close almost 14 years of local broadcasting, over half of which has been as a full-time Community Radio station.

Organisers had been delighted when, in 2003, the station became Britain's very first Community Radio. However, financially it has always been on a knife-edge.

And in a statement issued on Monday it was revealed that months of fund-raising effort had come to nothing – it was decided there was insufficient money to enable the station to continue until the end of its five year licence which expires in December 2010.

The staterment ended: "Management have taken this decision now in order to preserve the core of the project assets so as to provide a foundation on which community media work in the future may be built, although what form that may take is currently uncertain."

During the station's lifetime thousands of Forest people have been involved by making or appearing in programmesor helping in other ways.

As well as the benefit of people involved, the project has built an audio archive running into thousands of hours covering not only the big events like the 'Save Our Services' campaign but also documenting dialect and culture as well as stories of ordinary Forest lives.

Volunteer John Belcher, who presents a weekly programme called 'Talking Forest', said the announcement was not a surprise.

"I'm not sure whether to be angry or sad. It's another blow for the Forest but I suppose it was an easy target. I always believed it had the potential to grow but, sadly, it always had to depend on other people," he said.

"The number of listeners was said to be between seven and eight thousand and I had come to regard it as a very useful service. It will be a loss to the Forest as it was a useful tool for people to express opinions and, goodness knows, at this moment we need platforms for people to have their say."