A method for a user equipment device of a cellular communications system includes block encoding a control signal with a variable rate block code whose coding rate generally matches a variable coding rate of a data channel upon which the report is to be transmitted. The encoding includes determining an output encoding length K which is a function of a current code rate of the data channel, repeating a block encoding matrix to provide it with at least K rows and generating an encoded control signal on the data channel from the control signal using the first K rows of the repeated block encoding matrix.