The BBC is set to further delay reforms to the over-75 TV licence.
Since the over-75 TV licence was introduced in the year 2000, the concession has been available to every household with at least one occupant aged 75 years or older.
Until now the concession was funded by the Government, but under the terms of its latest Royal Charter the BBC accepted full liability for payment of the over-75 TV licence from 2020 in return for:
- the removal of the six-year TV licence price freeze;
- the closure of the so-called iPlayer loophole;
- reduced contributions towards the national roll out of broadband;
- reduced contributions towards Welsh-language broadcaster S4C.
You can read details of the agreement reached between the Government and BBC in these letters (here and here).
Despite the Government making clear to the BBC that it wished the over-75 TV licence to be retained beyond 2020, the BBC has decided to make savings by drastically scaling back the concession.
Under the BBC's toughened eligibility criteria the "free" TV licence will only be available to those over-75 households with an occupant in receipt of pension credit.
Under the new rules around 3.7 million households that currently receive a "free" over-75 TV licence will have to pay the full licence fee if they wish to continue viewing TV programmes (or BBC on-demand programmes via the iPlayer). Unsurprisingly, many over-75s are outraged at the idea of having to pay for a perk they now view as an automatic entitlement.
Pensioners who claim an over-75 TV licence but fail to provide evidence of their entitlement to pension credit will be targeted by the new TV Licensing "outreach team", which will be employed by the existing operations contractor Capita Business Services Ltd.
The reforms were meant to come into force on 1st June 2020, but given the coronavirus outbreak that date was pushed back to 1st August. I now looks as if the date is going to slip back even further, perhaps to as far as 1st October.
By that time the current BBC Director General, Tony Hall, will have been replaced by current BBC Studio's boss Tim Davie.
A Whitehall insider told The Times: "They've said August, but we've been told from the top of the BBC that they're going to extend that to October.
"They say they won't go any later than that - that's the crux point and the Government won't intervene on that. It also won't bail them out."
It has been reported that Davie is not keen on the introduction of the reforms and rumours have circulated that he might cancel them completely.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director for Age UK, welcomed the likely delay and said it would be "almost impossible" to bring it in at this time.
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