A PIRATE radio station broadcasting to ethnic minority communities has been banned from the airwaves over fears it could put lives at risk.

Radio signals for emergency services could have been affected by broadcasting by city-based People's Choice Radio Station, a court was told.

Department of Trade and Industry investigators raided two addresses in Southampton from which PCRS used to broadcast.

They seized equipment used by the station, which has broadcast a broad mix of music, including Afro-Caribbean and Asian music, for the past ten years.

Southampton magistrates fined care assistant Kim Hall and disc jockey Brian Fenton, pictured top, following an investigation by DTI officers.

Hall admitted allowing her home in Radcliffe Road, St Mary's, to be used for the unlawful broadcast of the station on July 10 last year.

The court was told that the station transmitted from a bedroom in the house as part of a community fun day, which included a barbecue in her back garden.

One of the station's DJs, Brian Fenton, known to listeners as DJ Fenny, was fined a total of £600 after pleading guilty to broadcasting without a licence from a flat in Millbrook House, Northam.

DTI investigators had raided both addresses and confiscated cassette decks, bags and boxes of records, a mobile phone used to take requests, CD players and transmission equipment concealed in a duvet.

Mother-of-three Hall, 40, was fined a total of £300.

The magistrates ordered all the equipment to be forfeited.

The court heard that PCRS had operated for ten years without prosecution, broadcasting at least once a week and catering for the inner city's ethnic communities.

Mary Harley, prosecuting on behalf of the DTI, said pirate radio stations had been known to interfere with radio signals used by the emergency services. Chairman of the bench Raymond Hunt told Hall: "The fines do not reflect the degree of seriousness the court attaches to this.

"Lives are at risk, emergency services can be affected and this has been going on for a number of years. The fines only reflect your ability to pay."

Speaking after the case, Hall said: "The schools are on our side - what other station would let children come on the air and sing songs to their mums on Mother's Day

"On the day of the raid we were holding a barbecue for kids from the neighbourhood and we had a temporary pool in the back garden.

"We were the only real community station in Southampton. We included white, black, Asian, mixed race - everybody.

"A petition has been started up calling for PCRS to be given a licence."

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