BBC ‘bullies’ spent £7m on fee threats

26million payment demands mailed in pandemic

THe BBC sent out more than 26million ‘bullying’ letters at a cost of about £7million over ten months last year as the country battled the pandemic.

Figures also reveal that ‘unlicensed mailings’ – to properties that TV Licensing thought did not have a licence – have been going up consistently in recent years.

It comes after the BBC was branded ‘heartless’ for pressuring hundreds of thousands of over-75s to pay for a licence as the pandemic deepened.

Figures released under Freedom of Information rules show that between the start of March and the end of December last year, TV Licensing sent 26,499,693 letters to ‘unlicensed properties’.

On average it cost the licensing body 27p in postage to send ‘standard’ letters, figures show. This means the cost of posting these letters would be about £7million. The true cost, which also includes printing and other costs, is thought to be much higher but the BBC refused to reveal this amount.

The figures also show that for the last full financial year – 2019/20 – a total of 34.3million of these letters were sent out. This was up from 28.6million in 2016/17. An annual colour TV licence costs £157.50, but the charge is increasing to £159 from April 1.

Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘The BBC are just not in the same world as everyone else. They live in their own elite bubble. The last people they care about is the licence fee payer. They’re quite happy to pay fortunes to celebrities but they don’t seem to care tuppence about people, many of whom are struggling during this Covid crisis.’

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, said: ‘This is a huge amount of taxpayers’ money to be spent on bullying BBC letters.

‘Hard-pressed households being chased for an ever more expensive TV tax highlights how completely outdated the whole model is. It’s time to scrap the licence fee and let the public decide what’s worth paying for.’ In January the Daily

‘Don’t seem to care tuppence’

Mail revealed that 525,223 letters had been sent to over-75s by the end of November, pressuring them to pay up, following a change in the rules that stripped many of the right to a free TV licence. These were on top of the 26.5million ‘unlicensed mailings’.

But last month it emerged that the BBC had temporarily halted the threat to prosecute over-75s who have failed to get a licence. It has done so in reaction to the pandemic.

A TV Licensing spokesman said: ‘We have a responsibility to inform people of changes to their licence and what they are legally required to do if they are not licensed and letters are a cost effective way of doing this, generating more revenue than they cost to send.’