After just six months of additional trading since it paid its last dividend to shareholders, private radio operator, UKRD Group, has declared a second dividend for 2011, to be paid in August.

The group, which this month confirmed growing profits and strong cash flow, recently saw its portfolio increase to seventeen licences with the acquisitions earlier this year of Blackburn based The Bee and Preston’s, Central FM, both in East Lancashire. These additions made the group the fourth largest operator, by licence, in the country.

Group Chief Executive, William Rogers, confirmed that whilst the present financial year had its challenges, trading was “satisfactory bearing in mind the state of the economy” and the group was in a “very healthy position.”

“It is fantastic to see growth across the group and we are in a position to ensure that our shareholders are rewarded for their support over the years,” he said. “I fully expect to see progress being maintained as we move into the next financial year with further dividends being declared.”

“We are seeing our actual numbers of listeners, as well as our share of audience, grow and this is being converted into improved trading performances across the portfolio,” said Rogers.

An outspoken critic of the radio sector establishment over the years, and the Government’s DAB policy generally, Rogers, who resigned his company from trade body Radio Centre two years ago, said “the genuinely local radio model we are following is successful in terms of community service and engagement as well as commercial delivery and I regret deeply that all too many in the commercial radio industry still work to undermine what is a perfectly good operating model by encouraging the Government to follow its present completely inept strategy for our sector.”