A couple of observations from someone with no vested interest at all but 53 years in radio.
First of all, radio costs money, even when done 'on the cheap'. My upcoming 9 - day RSL in Harwich for Radio Mi Amigo will set the Trustees of the LV18 back over six grand before anyone opens a fader. Copyright payments on a London DAB station are substantial, and carriage fees, publicity, news service etc all cost very significant amounts. So that's all before you hire a single jock.
Basic economics demands that you spend as little as is absolutely necessary on a risky venture like this, and even with voicetracking, some of the names in the schedule won't come for the "petrol money + unlimited coffee" that the vast majority of small/startup non-FM stations pay these days.
To clarify the jargon for some posters who unsurprisingly find it baffling: "Live" means a show produced in real time (i.e. it takes 60 minutes to make a 60 minute show) at the moment you're listening. "As Live" means one which was recorded in a studio in real time and then replayed from a server later. "VTd" = voicetracked. The presenter sits in a studio and records all the links in one session and a computer fits them into the right places. Or sometimes the wrong places. Good systems allow you to listen to the first ten seconds and last twenty seconds or so of the record so that your voice fits snugly. Poorer systems simply record the voice and try to match the music around it. I've used both and there's an enormous difference, believe me!
Leaving OFCOM requirements aside, does it really matter where things come from? To the taxi driver or the hairdressers or the housewife doing the cleaning, it's music and some chatter and it could come from Penzance or Pitlochry - as long as it sounds professional and does the job location makes no difference. If the news and travel sets its editorial values firmly in the right place, then it should all work. How many listeners really know which Radio 2 shows are recorded and which are live - or care?
After that, the problems of sound become more subtle. Processing makes a big difference, and on DAB so does the bitrate. It can take time to get the sound just right .
Thames is still in its babyhood, so give it a chance. Hard criticisms should be saved for at least the first two months - assuming a station like this survives that long.