I can't believe I missed it but a couple of weeks ago The Daily Telegraph's David Elstein wrote a very insightful article about TV licence evasion statistics.
As we all know by now the Beeb, bless them, can't give a straight answer about how many people they prosecute for licence evasion. If they revealed the true figure we'd all be rolling around on the floor laughing at how ineffective their database and "alternative detection methods" actually are.
Thankfully David, carrying on the DT's fine tradition of embarrassing TV Licensing, has drawn together several pieces of evidence revealing, at most, only 11.3% of licence evaders are caught. He writes in his article:
"[In their Annual Review] The BBC records 25.459m licences, but also admits to a 5.2 per cent evasion rate, which equates to 1.324m evaders. If we assume that the rate of 168,800 prosecutions for evasion the previous year continued in 2009/10, and that all were successful, we can calculate that there were 1.493m evaders in total, of whom just 11.3 per cent were actually caught."
It gets even better:
"Given that of the 25.459m licences in issue 4.008m were paid for by the government, on behalf of exempted over-75-year-olds, and that 68 per cent of the remainder paid by direct debit, the true evasion rate was much higher than 5.2 per cent. Eliminating the over-75s and the direct debit homes reveals that the households who needed to be pursued by TV Licensing numbered just 6.775m: so the total evasion rate was 22 per cent, and the successful evasion rate was 19.5 per cent."
So next time the BBC refuse to divulge the number of people they prosecute for licence evasion it'll further confirm what we know already - they're pretty poor at catching people!
As we all know by now the Beeb, bless them, can't give a straight answer about how many people they prosecute for licence evasion. If they revealed the true figure we'd all be rolling around on the floor laughing at how ineffective their database and "alternative detection methods" actually are.
Thankfully David, carrying on the DT's fine tradition of embarrassing TV Licensing, has drawn together several pieces of evidence revealing, at most, only 11.3% of licence evaders are caught. He writes in his article:
"[In their Annual Review] The BBC records 25.459m licences, but also admits to a 5.2 per cent evasion rate, which equates to 1.324m evaders. If we assume that the rate of 168,800 prosecutions for evasion the previous year continued in 2009/10, and that all were successful, we can calculate that there were 1.493m evaders in total, of whom just 11.3 per cent were actually caught."
It gets even better:
"Given that of the 25.459m licences in issue 4.008m were paid for by the government, on behalf of exempted over-75-year-olds, and that 68 per cent of the remainder paid by direct debit, the true evasion rate was much higher than 5.2 per cent. Eliminating the over-75s and the direct debit homes reveals that the households who needed to be pursued by TV Licensing numbered just 6.775m: so the total evasion rate was 22 per cent, and the successful evasion rate was 19.5 per cent."
So next time the BBC refuse to divulge the number of people they prosecute for licence evasion it'll further confirm what we know already - they're pretty poor at catching people!
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