We have the same thing in the US, made worse by licenses being good for 10 years here. Someone can SK one year into their license and most family won’t know to let the FCC know. On the plus side, it does give children a chance to get licensed and secure their family member’s callsign with a copy of the death certificate.
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I know that, but I will be amending my QRZ account from M0HGY to ME0HGY and also my SOTA accounts from M0HGY to ME0HGY. E is an optional RSL for England just like the other RSLs for other UK countries becoming optional and therefore it is no longer the case that using a callsign without an RSL means that you are operating in England so I plan to use the E RSL to identify that I am operating in England especially when making QSOs with radio amateurs overseas who may collect DXCC’s. I was totally against all RSL changes as you know, but now that sadly the RSLs have become optional and an optional E RSL has been added for England, I will be starting to use the E RSL.
Jimmy M0HGY, soon to be ME0HGY
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Just make sure you wait till the necessary laws are in place before you start.
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Its good to see the power increases (does all power corrupt though?). Change your call every 5 years instead of the 2 originally proposed? Not bothered I’ll keep KIO. I’ll stick with doing the RSL thing though.
It’s actually still the case that these are proposals that you can contact Ofcom about these proposals anytime before the 22nd January. I have just emailed Ofcom to ask them what the point was for asking radio amateurs for their views on each of their proposals if they were going to go ahead with them anyway and to also state to them how much I strongly disagreed with their changes to the RSL proposals. In this I have stated that when no RSL is used that this has always meant the station to be operating from England and if RSLs become optional that sadly this would no longer be the case and that not many would make use of the optional E RSL as this was never an RSL previously with the exception of the intermediate licence. I have said on this as well that all existing RSLs should be kept mandatory and that if they are going to introduce the E RSL that this should be mandatory as well, but it would be much better if all existing RSLs remained mandatory and that no E RSL is introduced for England.
I hope my email will get me somewhere, but I very doubt it will, I probably won’t even get a response from Ofcom to my email.
Jimmy M0HGY
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As I pointed out earlier a majority of responses were in favour of making RSLs optional. They have taken on board some comments as the power for 23cm(?) for foundation licencees will be 2W not 1W and callsigns will be recycled after 5 years, not 2.
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Would be interesting to see a geographical breakdown of those in favour - perhaps those who do not currently have an RSL - and those against - perhaps mostly those in GI, GW and GM etc who do…?
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Ditto. However, if I do give it up and someone acquires it and wants to log SOTA activations under that call, the fun will begin because I’ve already used the call fir SOTA and have a logs on the database A long shot of course, but it is still a possibility. The opportunity to change calls every 5 years of course could increase the fun. 
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Reallocating calls will not matter for honour rolls/scoring as that all uses the UserID, a numeric value, that identifies your account. Where it may be an issue is if someone does the sensible thing and uses their callsign as a username, then gives up SOTA and their call. Someone is allocated that call but they cannot create an account with the call as the username. So they have to use something else for the username. The only downside is say you gave up G4OIG and it was allocated again. You may see G4OIG twice in the honour rolls for QSOs made by you and by the new user. But that can be worked around easily too.
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OFCOM also increased the proposed Foundation power level from 20w to 25w, as suggested to align it with common radio power settings.
An interesting read and quite a few interesting changes to the licence requirements.
Already mentioned is the RSL optional change. When I looked at the published comments from responders on the excel sheet published by Ofcom I couldn’t help but thing that most of the responses didn’t grasp what the advantage of having an RSL means, but then again quite a few replies were Yes to the change and no comments as to why they thought it was needed.
The other interesting change is to the use of suffix after the call. There may be lots of interesting /???
Here is your starter xx9xxx/SOTA
I’ll get my coat and hat and leave quietly.
Ian GI0AZB
No number plate.
- Any suffix, following the ‘slash’ symbol (‘/’) may be added to the transmitted call sign
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Hmm. How about a place suffix? GW8ADD/LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH
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Maybe they were thinking of /QRP sort of usage. I don’t generally use /P unless I’m activating SOTA because it matters but I don’t bother with /M either. Who cares?
However, allowing people to add their own suffix might just be useful as an identifier for clubs? Groups and the like. (M6GKK/FISTS) sort of thing. Although it will not always be clear who or what the club/organisation/ they may represent. I can however seeing it get rather silly and overused, as Brian/G8ADD illustrates.
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You can keep the “SILIO” part, Brian 
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For those who haven’t read it https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0037/272998/Statement-Updating-the-amateur-radio-licensing-framework.pdf discusses the outcome of the consultation. It shows that a majority of respondents were in favour of the changes. It also shows that Ofcom have taken on board a lot of comments and have made positive alterations and corrected mistakes. I think the consultation has been a success.
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For years, I’ve been ignoring “/QRP” when received from the occasional chaser and just logging their call without the /QRP. I suppose from now on if a G station adds “/QRP” I will be obliged to log it. Does this in fact offer the opportunity for G stations to unleash a more subtle form of DQRM? Not wishing to give any ideas to anyone, but I wouldn’t be pleased if I was called in the 2m UKAC by G0XYZ/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ…
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The wording suggests that the suffix is an optional “extra” and not part of the “callsign” to which it is added, so I don’t think it changes the status of /qrp.
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Hi Colin,
I missed that change, In the June document (point 5.5) as you say Ofcom was suggesting 20w. Which to me seemed a reasonable 100% (3dB) increase and there are a few 20w portable HF radios around. Do you mean that 100w HF transceivers have 25w marked rather than 20w - I would not go by what it says on a knob in any case a trusted power meter on the output is needed if you have a radio that is capable of more power than your licence allows, I would think.
I wonder if Ofcom has “snook in” any further changes to what they originally proposed?
73 Ed.
Hi Tom,
Rather than having to apply for a special event callsign, this could also be a sneaky way of creating an identification to represent the event you are supporting - for example
(normal club call sign)/YOTACAMP-2024
Ed.
QRP is not a suffix, it’s a cw brevity code.
Ahoi
Pom
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