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Thursday, 27 January 2022

Parliament Publishes TV Licence Statistics

The House of Commons Library has just published its latest briefing paper on the TV licence.

The 20-page document gives all manner of TV licence statistics. The information is sourced by Parliamentary researchers instead of BBC PR or data harlots, so we consider it pretty reliable.

Below we summarise some of the key statistics from the document. The most recent data is given:

1. TV licence revenue in the year 2020/21 = £3.75 billion (up from £3.51 billion in 2010/11).

2. Percentage of homes with at least one TV set at the start of 2020 = 95% (this is an estimated value).

3. UK-wide evasion rate in the year 2019/20 = 7.25% (up from 5.20% in 2010/11).

4. Evasion rate by nation in the year 2016 = 10% Scotland; 9% Northern Ireland; 6% England; 6% Wales.

5. Number of TV licences in force in 2019/20 = 25.9 million

6. Cost of collecting the TV licence fee in 2019/20 = £136 million (up from £119 million in 2018/19).

7. Number of prosecutions for TV licence evasion in 2020 = 55,061.

8. Number of convictions for TV licence evasion in 2020 = 52,477.

    - Of which, the number of females convicted was = 39,742 (76%).

    - Of which, the number of males convicted was = 12,735 (24%).

9. Number of households receiving a concessionary over-75 TV licence in 2019/20 = 4.7 million.

10. Proportion of viewers watching linear (e.g. licensable) TV programmes in 2020 = 84%.

11. Proportion of viewers watching non-linear (e.g. on-demand, non-licensable) programmes in 2020 = 16%.

12. BBC audience share in 2020 = 32%.

You can download and read the full briefing paper here.

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2 comments:

Stuart Sutherland said...

3. UK-wide evasion rate in the year 2019/20 = 7.25% (up from 5.20% in 2010/11).

How do they know that? Off all those households that do not have a TV Licence, how many of them are evading the TV Licence, or like me and many others, avoiding buying a TV Licence by not doing anything that requires a TV Licence.

Until someone knocks on my door to find out, they have no way of knowing if I am an evader or an avoider. In the eight years that I have not had a TV Licence, no one has knocked on my door to find out. The reality is that even if someone does knock on my door, they will go away non the wiser.

Its the same difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. I would have thought parliament would understand the distinction, but apparently not.

Anonymous said...

"BBC audience share = 32%".

That's the argument for binning the TVL right there.