An army of enforcers will start knocking on the doors of thousands of vulnerable pensioners this month demanding they pay £159 for their previously free TV licence – or face the ultimate threat of jail.
Masquerading as ‘customer care’ personnel, these debt collectors will actually be BBC debt collectors with a mission of tracking down more than a quarter of a million over-75s who have yet to pay for their TV licence.
Once they get their foot in the door, they will order pensioners to pay up. Failure to pay the bill could lead to prosecution, a £1,000 fine and prison if payment is not forthcoming.
Threat: TV Licensing’s letter warning debt collectors will be called in if the fee is not paid
These looming doorstep attacks follow the scrapping of the free TV licence for over-75s by the BBC last August. Despite the fact that one in ten of the five million affected pensioners have already paid for a licence, 260,000 are standing firm. Many of them are vulnerable, live alone and are surviving on incomes of less than £180 a week.
Some are furious that their right to a free licence has been taken away without any proper consultation while others simply cannot afford to pay. By law, a licence is required to watch any TV live on any channel.
Retired bookmaker Colin James, 82, from Wolverhampton, is furious that he has been asked to pay for his TV licence. On Friday, he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The BBC is giving us a load of old codswallop about how it needs our money – while frittering away a fortune on obscene salaries that those who fund it can only ever dream of.’
He added: ‘Having paid for a TV licence my whole life with the promise of it being free in old age, the BBC has suddenly changed the goal posts. Does it have a magic switch to turn my TV off? It can bully all it wants, it can send round the heavies, but I’m not paying.’
The total amount the BBC could potentially receive from the 260,000 targeted victims adds up to just over £40million. This is equivalent to the cost of 52 BBC presenters currently earning more than £150,000 a year – plus the salaries of as many as 100 ‘senior leaders’. Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker is the highest paid – earning £1.36million a year, and this is after a £390,000 pay cut.
The BBC already enjoys annual revenue of more than £3.5billion from TV licences. Further income from media sales tops this up to almost £5billion.
The decision to start knocking on the doors of pensioners follows a series of ‘please act now before your licence is cancelled’ and ‘gentle reminder’ letters sent out in recent weeks. But the letters also forewarn of enforcement officers arriving if they fail to pay.
Retired 82-yearold printer Johnnie Carslake, from Norfolk, says: ‘The BBC can take me to court – and get me thrown into jail. I am making a stand and refuse to pay the fee. We had a legal deal for a free licence that the BBC has now broken.’
Jan Shortt, general secretary of campaign group National Pensioners Convention, points out that it is not just a broken promise leading many people to refuse to pay. Some 60,000 pensioners, she says, do not have the cash.
Shortt warns: ‘Many people have a hard decision to make this year – whether they turn on their heating or pay for a TV licence. For many vulnerable people, the television provides comfort and company.
‘We estimate at least 60,000 are surviving on perhaps £180 a week or less and are just above the threshold that would allow them to claim Pension Credit – and be eligible for a free TV licence. With soaring heating bills and rising council taxes, people will be forced to decide if they can still afford this basic luxury or must forgo their TV to keep their home warm.’
She adds: ‘We would never encourage people to break the law, but we can fully understand the decision made by those that are refusing to pay. We respect the stance they are taking.’
An estimated 1.5million households are eligible for a free TV licence because they receive Pension Credit – but only about 450,000 people have applied. If you are above State pension age and earn less than £173.75 a week as a single person, or £265.20 a week as a couple, then Pension Credit will top your income up to these levels.
Terry Clohosy, a retired tool maker from Essex, only received a free TV licence for six months before the BBC decided to take it away from him. The married 77- year-old says: ‘I have been getting a letter every month for the last year demanding I pay up. Then this month I received a letter adopting a more softly-softly approach. That was until the end of the letter when it stated that if it had not heard from me by August, ‘your address will be passed on to Romford Enforcement Division for investigation’. It is disgraceful behaviour. If my mother – who died a few years ago in her 90s – had received such a letter, she would have been reduced to tears.’
The Mail on Sunday visited the swanky £1billion renovated offices of Broadcasting House in Central London last September, armed with hundreds of readers’ letters complaining about the scrapping of the free over-75s licence.
We asked the BBC for a meeting with the new £525,000-a-year Director-General Tim Davie so we could hand over the correspondence.
We also wanted to make it clear that there was a growing rebellion among many pensioners refusing to pay – and that it could end up with the BBC spending vast sums of money on debt collectors to collect the fees. Our request was ignored.
The BBC is cloaking its attack on pensioners with phrases such as ‘customer care visits’ and is promising that there will be no ‘record of interview’ – meaning there will not be a prosecution if someone initially fails to pay the fee. It also claims it will use ‘members of staff who are specially trained in assisting older customers’ to visit pensioners.
But the fact remains that a failure to toe the line and hand over the £159 will ultimately end in prosecution. Incidentally, no one is obliged to let the debt collectors into their homes.
On Friday, the BBC told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Now that the transition period is over, our focus is to continue to support everyone to become correctly licensed.
‘We appreciate some of the small group who have not yet made arrangements may have concerns about being able to pay, which is why we have written to them and will shortly be undertaking customer care visits, carried out by specially trained staff.
‘There are a range of payment options to help with this, including options to spread the cost.’