We’re greedy
TV licensing boss boasts to undercover reporter of high-pressure techniques and tricks he orders staff to use when hounding people on their doorstep
MAIL INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR
IN the back room of a Holiday Inn Express, Ian Doyle is briefing his latest recruit.
The silver-haired former casino boss – wearing a pin stripe shirt and a thick red tie – is sitting behind a large meeting room table strewn with papers.
A large silver watch jangles on his left wrist as he waves his arm in the air.
‘We will drive you as hard as we can to get as much as we can out of you because we’re greedy,’ he declares. ‘Everybody’s target driven. You’ve got your target, I’ll have a target, my boss has a target and so it goes on up the chain of command.’
He hits the table firmly with his hand, saying: ‘So we need good clean work. And you need to be able to focus.’
Who is Mr Doyle? And what is this high-pressured job, which requires such ruthless pursuit of cash?
Despite his tough words, Mr Doyle is not a Wall Street financier, or even an ambitious car salesman. He is an area manager for Capita – the outsourcing giant that earns more than £2billion a year from public sector contracts.
Capita collects taxes and assesses benefit claimants for the Government. It is also entrusted by the BBC – and paid £59million a year – to collect the £145.50 licence fee.
On a rainy Tuesday morning in January, Mr Doyle is at the Holiday Inn in Ching- ford, East London. He and his colleague, Lanre Coker-Ojo, are interviewing candidates hoping to be a BBC licence fee enforcement officer.
These are the officials who visit homes where there is no registered licence and sell TV licences. They question residents and make sure they sign up if they watch TV or BBC iPlayer. Last year alone, they turned up at three million properties – and caught 298,000 evaders.
Using handheld machines, they can register homeowners for direct debits on their doorsteps.
They even take cash from those who can only spare a few coins.
‘We’re looking to get 28 licence sales per week from each officer,’ Mr Doyle tells our undercover reporter. ‘As soon as you hit that magic 28, there’s a bonus – a commission scheme.’
The salary is £20,000 a year, but, as Mr Doyle explains, ‘ You can earn another thousand, fifteen hundred pounds a month.
‘If you spend 15 minutes going from door to door and they are only about two minutes apart then you’re not going to see enough customers,’ says Mr Doyle.
‘Not seeing enough customers, you’re not going to be generating enough return to the company and the company will be kicking my backside to say what’s going on.
‘Cash, debit, credit card, we’ll take anything. I tell people I’ll take shirt buttons. I’ve not had to take any yet. It’s just an ice breaker.’ Mr Doyle explains that for each sale on a doorstep, TV Licensing officers are required to complete a ‘conviction statement’.
Conviction statements are the forms Capita officers fill in during home visits. They record whether they have noticed a TV through a front window, or heard a programme playing.
They take notes of everything that is said in conversation with a customer – including their name and whether they admitted watching TV or BBC iPlayer.
For the conviction statement to be admissible in court, the officials have to give a formal police-style warning about their right to silence and that anything they say could be used against them.
Shockingly, Mr Doyle advises the undercover reporter to compile evidence against residents for conviction statements by chatting to them informally – before then reading them the caution. This suggests people could have no idea they may get dragged to court when answering seemingly friendly questions at their front doors.
TV Licensing has always maintained that it would prefer people to buy a licence rather than be prosecuted. Capita says its bonus scheme is based only on sales of licence fees and not convictions.
But Mr Doyle tells the undercover reporter that even if people pay when they are visited at home, they can still be prosecuted, given a criminal record – and made to pay more money in court fines.
‘You can only get the sale with a conviction statement so basically you’ve got to take 28 conviction statements before you can start hitting extra money,’ Mr Doyle tells the undercover reporter. ‘The more you get, you earn more money. That’s all it is.’
During the 90-minute interview it is clear the Capita bosses have little time for money problems, fam- ily bereavements or – as Mr Doyle puts it – ‘sob stories’.
‘It is not a difficult job, I can’t stress that enough,’ he says.
‘But it is quite difficult as soon as you throw in these things called members of the public. Because for whatever reason they’ve all got a story.
‘You’ll get nearly all the information you need for a conviction statement in the first 40 seconds of conversation with the customer.
‘But it will still take you five or ten minutes to actually get it down onto the form because they’re going to constantly interrupt you.
‘So it’s just a case of learning the listening skills, the empathy skills but getting the hand working at the same time.’
Mr Coker- Ojo regularly interjects, apparently keen to ensure the reporter is tough enough. ‘The customer says: “Listen I can’t afford to pay.” What would you do? And how would that make you feel?’ Mr Coker-Ojo asks.
Mr Doyle brags: ‘One of my officers – my highest performing officer – generally comes in around about 38 to 42 sales a week. They’re obviously after more money. My guy really goes for it.’
As well as the interview, the bosses set a written challenge to show the best times for catching different types of people at home.
In 2011, the BBC gave Capita a £560million contract to administer the licence fee for eight years. Since then, revenue for the BBC from collections has risen by more than £200million to £3.74billion.
Residents have complained repeatedly that Capita staff have hounded them unfairly to force
‘For whatever reason they all have a story’ ‘Hit the magic 28 sales a week and there’s a bonus’
‘Cash, debit, creditcard... I tell people I’ll take shirt buttons’
payments and refused to believe them if they said they did not watch TV.
Particularly concerning are figures that show far more women than men are jailed for not paying licence fee evasion fines.
Out of 38 people jailed for the offence in 2015, 20 were women. Five were in their fifties. They served an average of 24 days each. In 2014, 39 people were locked up for the offence and 28 of them were women.
Experts believe this is because women are more likely to answer the door and be willing to answer questions.
Capita says it does not target women or vulnerable people and that any ‘pertinent’ questions are put to residents only after a caution has been given. It says offic- ers work out when people are home because this is more cost-efficient.
A spokesman added: ‘The suggested content of the recruitment interview does not reflect the high standards that we expect, and paints a wholly misleading picture of the culture, skills and attitude of TV Licensing’s operation.’
The BBC says there is no evidence women are unfairly targeted and that where a first time offender pays before court TV Licensing will drop the case.
A spokesman added: ‘ TV Licensing goes to great lengths to encourage people to buy a licence, and will only visit when other methods have not worked. It’s our policy to only prosecute evaders as a last resort.’