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Monday 29 August 2016

TV Licensing Court Presenters Are Not Legally Qualified


The TV Licensing prosecutors that see almost 170,000 individuals convicted of TV licence evasion every year are not legally qualified or subject to regulation, the TV Licensing Blog can exclusively reveal.

An email was recently sent to TV Licensing enquiring about the legal regulation of its prosecutors, which it refers to as Court Presenters.

In response, TV Licensing's Sue Barnett wrote: "Our Court Presenters are not legally qualified and are not subject to formal regulation, and as such are required to seek permission from the court to present cases. TV Licensing, as the BBC’s agent, is answerable to the BBC."

TV Licensing Operations Contractor Capita Business Services Ltd. is responsible for enforcement of the TV licence fee and prosecution of alleged TV licence evaders. It employs Court Presenters like the specimen shown above .

The revelation that Capita's Court Presenters are not legally qualified or subject to regulation, should hopefully embolden anyone wrongly accused of TV licence evasion. They may be fearful of mounting a legal challenge in the mistaken belief the prosecutor is legally qualified, when in fact they probably aren't.

As we have said all along, it is only by pleading not guilty that a person can force TV Licensing to prove its case against them. If an alleged TV licence evader just rolls over and accepts their fate, then TV Licensing will never have to produce evidence of the offence for closer scrutiny by the court. Quite often, in our opinion, that evidence is seriously flawed (or even non-existent).

Much more information for those accused of TV licence evasion in our earlier articles:
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

chris christious visited my local barbers recently and he demanded that he gets half price hair cut because he only got half head of hair !

Anonymous said...

Well I heard that he went to a mind reader
and got all his money back!

Anonymous said...

Yet more proof the whole TVL organisation are a bunch of cowboys

Fred Bear said...

According to the Bailiff Advice Online website:

"Capita TV Licensing submit ‘bulk applications’ to the Magistrates Court and over the space of approx 1-2 hours the court will typically consider approx 50 cases."

In other words, 1-2 minutes per case. It's obvious that BBC/Capita rely on people pleading guilty or on not entering a plea or not turning up at court so the Capita Court Presenter can simply read through the statement and the magistrates can sentence immediately, taking into account the financial circumstances of the defendant.

I doubt if BBC/Capita find it worth their while to bother with contested cases as it would mess up their schedule and they'd probably have to find the goon who took the statement to give evidence.

The whole system is ludicrous - no wonder in Scotland the Procurator Fiscal mostly dishes out £75 'fiscal fines' rather than bother summoning people to court.

Admin said...

That was certainly the case in the pre-Single Justice era. It wasn't uncommon to see 50 or 60 cases dealt with in an hour and maybe one or two of those defendants would appear in person. A lot of TV Licensing's cases will be hidden from public sight now as they are channelled down the Single Justice route. Only the contested/complicated cases will appear in open court, which may give the impression that TV Licensing has scaled back its operation. The workload of Capita Court Presenters will have reduced significantly, as there is no requirement for them to attend Single Justice hearings.

Fred Bear said...

Thanks for the info, Admin.