A row has blown up over plans to switch off analogue radio in the UK, the country with the biggest digital radio take up in the world.

The government is set to announce a switchover timetable next month and commercial radio industry body RadioCentre wants it to happen in 2018.

But a group of around 80 stations is calling for the plan to be abandoned altogether, claiming that rolling out sufficient transmitters for the DAB platform will be too costly.

The group, which includes UTV, the owner of the national sports station talkSPORT and the radio arm of influential TV production company Celador, say replacing analogue sets with DAB radios will cost households hundreds of pounds.

They want the British government to adopt a platform-neutral approach to digital radio instead of switching over to DAB – the current UK terrestrial digital radio platform.

On Wednesday, one radio group quit its membership of RadioCentre, saying it felt that the body no longer represented smaller radio players, who are less enthusiastic about the roll out of DAB.

Forty-six per cent of people in the UK claim ownership of a DAB digital radio but sales have remained flat for two years running.

Almost half of all households without the technology said they have no intention of buying one in the next 12 months, according to a report by media regulator Ofcom.