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Camden New Journal - By PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 3 May 2007

One of the offending aerials

Call to sink roof top
radio pirates

Operators have ‘links to crime’ – councillor

WHEN the evening episode of the Archers is interrupted by a crackling burst of gangster rap, Radio 4 listeners in Belsize Park and Haverstock direct their genteel curses towards one of Camden’s most recognisable landmarks.
The five towers of the Chalcots estate, strung like teeth along Adelaide Road, are host to an unwanted but persistent nuisance. Their 23-storey high rooftops, veined with the cables feeding the flats below, also bristle with the antennae of pirate broadcasters who share the airwaves with the BBC.
According to Belsize Park Gardens resident Philip Bergman, the pirates have been a persistent irritant for years. He said: “They broadcast on FM and it is very close to the frequency for Radio 4 – it completely swamps it at any time of day. If you take a portable radio you have to walk halfway up Primrose Hill before you are clear.”
The transmitters cast a radio shadow across the fashionable wedge of leafy terraces between Primrose Hill and the Royal Free Hospital.
There are also significant health and safety fears. Access to the rooftops of the Chalcots tower blocks is restricted, and the pirates use ventilation flues which discharge on the roof to house their transmission cables.
Belsize councillor Arthur Graves said: “Random people wandering up onto the roofs of Chalcots and running illegal businesses is obviously undesirable. Damage to the ventilation system and unplanned wiring could have impacts on the residents in the flats.”
Responsibility for dealing with the pirates lies with the police and Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog charged with clamping down on illegal broadcasts.
But both have stuttered in their attempts to deal with the nuisance. Belsize police sergeant Jason Moseley told concerned residents at their last community Safer Neighbourhoods meeting that attempted ‘sting’ operations on the Chalcots rooftops had fallen foul of the pirates’ willingness to booby-trap their equipment.
He said: “We have carried out some operations to deal with the equipment, including joint operations with Ofcom. Unfortunately there are now health and safety considerations. On one occasion an Ofcom engineer received a shock when he was dismantling an antenna.”
Sgt Moseley said on Tuesday: “We are working with Ofcom and partners at Camden, but arresting the offenders or putting on ‘stings’ is only a short term measure. All they’re doing is contravening part of the Telecommunications Act – which means a fine. As a long term measure we need to see no access to the roof, or putting scramblers up there.”
A press official at Camden Council, which manages Chalcots estate, said that “many operators of pirate stations have links to organised crime””.
He added: “By forcing security doors to gain access to the roof and fixing their transmitters these pirates are causing damage to council property. We are working with the police to tackle these problems and will continue to remove any illegal equipment we find on the roofs of our housing blocks to protect the safety of our residents.”

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