TV Licensing often asks people who do not legally need a TV licence to reaffirm their status by making a No Licence Needed (NLN) declaration.
During one of my regular trawls of TV licence related cyberspace, I recently came across the BBC TV, LICENCE FREE Facebook group.
It's a very popular public group with in excess of 50,000 members. It does an admirable job of encouraging members to ditch the BBC TV licence fee and adopt alternative legally-licence-free methods of viewing instead. All heartening stuff, which I fully endorse and agree with.
What I do disagree with, however, is the group's regular advice to members that they should make a NLN declaration. There appears to be a certain naivety that TV Licensing actually respects NLN declarations, when it reality that is often not the case.
A reminder of the TV Licensing Blog's position: Anyone who does not legally require a TV licence is under no legal obligation at all to inform TV Licensing of the fact and should not do so.
If you do not require a TV licence, TV Licensing is not entitled to a millisecond of your time or inconvenience. You certainly should not be jumping through the pointless and unnecessary hoops of the NLN declaration process.
In my view, which is based on decades of experience and the collective knowledge of a lot of experts in the field (learned members of the TV Licence Resistance forums), making a NLN declaration is a bad idea for the following reasons:
- It confirms to TV Licensing that an address is occupied, active and worthy of further attention;
- It demonstrates a degree of compliance with TV Licensing, which it may attempt to exploit later on;
- It provides TV Licensing with personal information to which it has no legal entitlement (names, contact details etc);
- There is no statutory basis at all for making a NLN declaration. It is a process manufactured entirely for the convenience and benefit of TV Licensing;
- TV Licensing has a policy of visiting NLN and Unconfirmed No Set (UNS) properties for further investigation;
- There is no guarantee an NLN declaration will be accepted or respected by TV Licensing. TV Licensing routinely ignores NLN declarations. Even if an NLN declaration was accepted, TV Licensing will regularly contact the occupier to reaffirm their NLN status.
I would conclude by saying that TV Licensing has vexatiously prosecuted many innocent people who made the mistake of providing more information than they should have done. Take it from me that TV Licensing has no moral compass. It is prepared to plumb the depths of depravity in order to achieve the results it wants.
The BBC is fully aware of the gutter tactics employed by its TV Licensing contractors.
TV Licensing cannot be trusted. Anyone who makes the mistake of doing so, does so at their peril.
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