TV Licensing Postal Costs

The BBC has come under much criticism recently for the way it squanders money pursuing pointless matters.

The BBC Trust, who govern the Corporation, has also been critical of menacing tone of TV Licensing correspondence sent to unlicensed addresses, quite a number of which have no need at all for a TV licence. Despite the Trust's reservations the BBC, who act as the statutory Licensing Authority, has failed to moderate the wording of its routine letters, dubbed threatograms, which are being distributed at a more alarming and costly rate than ever.

Using the Freedom of Information Act we asked the BBC just how expensive it was for TV Licensing to produce and distribute their famous red-daubed letters. True to form, as with almost half the FOIA requests they receive, the BBC managed to avoid answering most of our query. Having successfully challenged the BBC several times on their lackadaisical and unlawful attitude to handling FOIA requests we are in no doubt they are wrong to withhold information yet again. On this occasion we see no point in pursuing the matter, because the information they did reveal was useful anyway. Incidentally their response was later that the 20 working day statutory time frame imposed by the Act.

We asked the BBC to provide answers to the following:

1. The number of standard TV Licensing mailings (e.g. routine "threatograms") sent to unlicensed properties annually from 2008 to date.
2. The total cost of producing and sending the letters mentioned in Q1 above. Please give a break down of the printing and distribution costs annually from 2008 to date.
3. The number of TV Licensing mailings sent to unlicensed properties via a premium mail service (e.g. recorded, special delivery or similar) annually from 2008 to date. I trust you will apply common sense when interpreting the meaning of a "premium mail service".
4. The total cost of producing and sending the letters mentioned in Q3 above. Please give a break down of the printing and distribution costs annually from 2008 to date.

The BBC confirmed it had sent the following number of letters to unlicensed properties:

Financial year 2008/2009 - 21,537,844

Financial year 2009/2010 - 21,705,070

Financial year 2010/2011 - 20,521,697

Financial year 2011/2012 (to January) - 20,953,513

Assuming an even frequency of monthly distribution, based on the 2011/2012 (to January) figures provided, it can be seen that TV Licensing are likely to have sent out around 27 million routine letters by the end of the 2011/12 financial year. This represents an increase of around 28% on the previous year.

The BBC refused to divulge printing and sorting costs, as the information may have been prejudicial to the commercial interests of their contractors dealing with those matters. However, they did confirm that the average postal cost of each routine letter was as follows:

Financial year 2008/2009 - £0.1462
Financial year 2009/2010 - £0.15548
Financial year 2010/2011 - £0.15567
Financial year 2011/2012 (to January) - £0.18383

A little bit of number crunching and it can be seen that the total postal costs for routine letters sent were:

Financial year 2008/2009 - 21,537,844 x £0.1462 = £3,148,832.79
Financial year 2009/2010 - 21,705,070 x £0.15548 = £3,374,704.28
Financial year 2010/2011 - 20,521,697 x £0.15567 = £3,194,612.57
Financial year 2011/2012 (to January) - 20,953,513 = £0.18383 = £3,851,884.29

Financial year 2011/2012 - 27,000,000 (est.) x £0.18383 = £4,963,410.00 (est.)

Remember that these are postal costs only and do not include the cost of printing, folding and sorting before the letters enter the Royal Mail system. These total production and distribution costs are likely to be around double the values given above.

It's worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of these letters are being sent to properties that do not need a TV licence, most of which have confirmed that fact to TV Licensing. TV Licensing's belligerent attitude to no-TV declarations, insisting they perform invasive confirmatory visits despite having no legal authority to do so, is costing the BBC millions of pounds in wasted postage alone.

The full text of our request and the BBC's partial response can be found here.