Enforcing the TV Licence – busting some of the myths

Following today’s Daily Mail article criticising the way the licence fee is enforced, I wanted to take the opportunity to explain how we operate, and our approach to evasion. Licence fee evasion remains low at between five and six per cent, one of the lowest rates in Europe. So we know the vast majority who need a licence have one - a comparatively small number of people will receive letters or visits from our enquiry officers.

Helping people pay

It is a criminal offence to watch or record live TV without a valid licence. Anyone doing so, on any device, is breaking the law. We give people every opportunity to pay for a licence, and will do everything we can to help them to spread the cost so they stay licensed. We know some people do struggle financially, and our teams work with more than 420 money advice and community groups across the UK to provide advice about small weekly instalment payments and concessions. Contrary to what the article suggests, those aged 75 and over are required to have a licence if they need one, but it’s provided for free. It is only fair there are consequences for people who deliberately evade but we’d always prefer people pay for a licence, and only prosecute as a last resort. Prosecution decisions are based on the Crown Prosecution Service guidelines and include both an evidential and public interest test before cases proceed to a magistrates’ court.

Prosecutions in context

Every UK household which watches or records live TV needs a licence. We have a database of 30m addresses with 25 million TV Licences in force. Prosecutions are small in number (only 0.6% of the addresses on our database in 2013 according to Ministry of Justice figures) when compared to the numbers of those who are properly licensed.

Who is taken to court?

When a TV Licensing enquiry officer visits a property, and finds TV equipment being used without a valid licence, they will take a statement from any responsible adult living at the address. It’s that person who may then be prosecuted. Officers might visit at any time of day, including evenings. While we don’t know for certain why more women are prosecuted than men, I’d refute any suggestion that this is due to improper behaviour by our officers, who operate by a strict code of conduct.

Court time taken up by TV Licensing cases

Licence fee evasion cases account for a significantly smaller proportion of magistrates’ court time than their numbers might suggest. Because the vast majority of cases are heard uncontested and in bulk they actually only account for 0.3 per cent of court time in the most recent data available.

Goodwill payments

The article suggests that TV Licensing was “forced” to make £100,000 in goodwill payments to people who have complained to us for about being unfairly pursued. This isn’t the case, the figure refers to goodwill payments made for all complaints to TV Licensing (including those about administrative errors, or matters of policy) over a six year period. In an operation the size of TV Licensing, with 25m licences in force, mistakes can happen. When they do occur we do everything we can to resolve customer issues. As is common practice we may offer a gesture of goodwill in a small number of cases where we have been at fault. In the case cited in the article, we offered Mr Troy our apologies and made a goodwill gesture in recognition of the fact that errors were made in handling his case.

What should the sanctions be for TV Licence evasion?

The Government has engaged David Perry QC to review how the licence fee is enforced and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport recently published the terms of reference of the review. The review will assess ways of enforcing the fee bearing in mind criteria including value for money, fairness for all licence payers and effectiveness in deterring evaders. It will report in June 2015. At present, there are no changes to the way we enforce the fee, and evaders face prosecution and an average fine of £170 levied in England and Wales.

We’re looking forward to engaging with the Government’s review. It’s important that any new system is both proportionate and successful in maintaining the current low levels of evasion and collection costs. An increase in evasion and collection costs would mean less money available to invest in content and services for the public.

Pipa Doubtfire, Head of Revenue Management, TV Licensing