TV Licensing and the BBC: A Question of Identity

The BBC goes to great lengths to distance itself from the caustic TV Licensing brand, despite retaining full legal responsibility for administration and enforcement of the TV licence system.

It would appear that the BBC does a fairly good job of hiding its TV Licensing credentials, with barely a day going by without some unfortunate soul, a victim of BBC misinformation, denying the link.

We have previously discussed a BBC policy document, the BBC Brand Communication Guidelines, which unequivocally states: "The TV Licensing brand is separate from the BBC brand. No link between the two brands should be made in customer facing communications, in particular, use of the BBC name and logo."

Stuart Leslie (or rather :stuart-Leslie:) recently used the WhatDoTheyKnow.com platform to seek further information about the relationship between the BBC and TV Licensing.

In its letter of response, the BBC stated the following:

• "We can confirm that TV Licensing is a trade mark used by the companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system."
• "The BBC is a public authority in respect of its television licensing functions and retains overall responsibility."
• "We can confirm that the BBC is data controller in respect of personal data supplied."
• "TV Licensing's operations are managed by the BBC TV Licensing Management Team - internally known as the Licence Fee Unit (LFU) - which is headed by Shirley Cameron, Director of Revenue and Customer Management."
• "The BBC TV Licensing Management Team is ultimately responsible for the final approval of mailings."

Of course readers of the TV Licensing Blog will know all this already, as we've regularly mentioned the relationship between the BBC and TV Licensing.

It is useful, for the benefit of all those BBC luvvies and deniers out there, that the BBC has confirmed the situation - that it retains full overall responsibility for all things TV Licensing; that it gives final approval for the threatening and dishonest wording of every TV Licensing threatogram

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Further anti-BBC reading:

• Is The True Or Did You Hear It On The BBC?, by David Sedgwick (aff. link)
• The BBC: Myth of a Public Service, by Tom Mills (aff. link)