SGR fm has taken a big step towards keeping its licence to broadcast to the Suffolk area despite a management shake-up earlier this year.The Ipswich-based station will now not have to face any competition as it bids to renew its broadcast licence for another eight years.

SGR fm has taken a big step towards keeping its licence to broadcast to the Suffolk area despite a management shake-up earlier this year.

The Ipswich-based station will now not have to face any competition as it bids to renew its broadcast licence for another eight years.

SGR provided the only declaration of intent to apply for the licence when the deadline set by the Radio Authority closed earlier today.

The new licence will run from Autumn 2003 and SGR's application will now be "fast-tracked" for review by the Radio Authority in the next few months.

"It's great news for us", said SGR's Managing Director, Mike Stewart. "The fact that no-one else has come in to bid for the licence is testament to the way the team here at the station have performed in recent years. I guess any competition thought they would be on a hiding to nothing as we are comfortably the top station in our area with very loyal listeners and advertisers".

"It should be a much easier and much quicker process now and hopefully we will be looking to get formal approval by the end of September or early October", he said.

The station originally started life in Ipswich as Radio Orwell back in 1975 - one of the first batch of local commercial stations to go on air - and Saxon Radio was launched in Bury St Edmunds in 1982 to form Suffolk Group Radio with Orwell. The two stations joined with Radio Broadland in Norwich under the banner of East Anglian Radio in 1990, and three years later, Orwell and Saxon were re-named SGR fm. The E.A.R. Group was taken over six years ago by the current owners, GWR, which operates about 20 local stations around the country as well as Classic FM.