Pipa Doubtfire, Head of Revenue Management at the BBC, leads the TV Licensing Management Unit which is responsible for collecting the Licence Fee, along with companies such as Capita and Proximity, operating under the “TV Licensing” trademark. Here she reveals the latest performance figures, published today in the 2016/17 TV Licensing Annual Review.
In the past year, TV Licensing collected a record £3.8 billion to fund BBC programmes and services and the number of licences in force reached the highest ever level of 25.8m. Alongside this, we maintained evasion at the very low level of 6 or 7 per cent, meaning around 94 per cent of homes and businesses across the UK are correctly licensed. We’ve also been able to reduce complaints by 50 per cent since 2010/11.
In September, a law change meant a licence is now needed to watch or download BBC programmes on demand – including catch-up TV on BBC iPlayer. Although the vast majority of people already were covered by a licence, we worked hard to inform unlicensed households, utilising all channels, including media communications and marketing via radio trails, digital ads, letters, emails and our website, as well as pop up messages on iPlayer itself. We also contacted more than 800 stakeholder organisations to update communications for their clients. The change resulted in around an additional 83,000 sales and additional revenue of around £12m revenue for BBC programmes and services.
A further difference this year was the cost of the fee rising with inflation in April for the first time since 2010. We made a number of changes to help Licence Fee payers, particularly those who may struggle to make payments. This included extending monthly refunds to include all types of refund payments and trialling a dedicated phone line to support money advisers and their clients.
We’ve also spent time making our website easy to use and as intuitive as possible. There were around 27m visits to the site last year – up 35 per cent on the year before - and 8m transactions. More than a quarter of our customers - 7.5m - now receive their TV Licence by email.
This strong and consistent performance would not be possible without the commitment of everyone in TV Licensing and the Licence Fee Unit who work to raise awareness of when a licence is needed and to collect and enforce the fee. Together, we help the BBC deliver distinctive, world-class content for Licence Fee payers, as well as investments in home-grown children’s services and digital and technological innovation.
Pipa Doubtfire is Head of Revenue Management at the BBC
