BBC loses £1.1bn as more households opt out of paying licence fee
The BBC is losing more than £1bn a year from households opting out of the licence fee.
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Fee evasion and cancellation last year cost the corporation £1.1bn - despite two million enforcement visits to people’s homes.
The BBC said it “has become harder to get people to answer their doors”
According to the BBC’s annual report, the number of TV licences fell by around 300,000 between March 2024 and March 2025.
“Declining household participation and rising evasion has not been successfully tackled, and BBC users not purchasing a licence is unfair to the vast majority of households who do pay theirs,” the BBC said.
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The Commons public accounts committee said the BBC was not doing enough to enforce the collection of the licence fee.
The number of households staying they do not need a licence because they do not consume any BBC content has risen from 2.4n in 2021 to 3.6m this year - a loss of £617m in fees.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative chair of the public accounts committee, said its report revealed “an organisation under severe pressure”.
“Our report makes clear that the ground is shifting beneath the BBC’s feet – the traditional enforcement method of household visits is seeing fewer and fewer returns at a time of heightened competition for almost every aspect of the BBC’s activities,” he said.
The BBC’s output has been mired in a series of recent scandals.
Earlier this month it emerged BBC Panorama edited footage of Donald Trump to exaggerate his role in the Capitol riots.
Director-general Tim Davie and chief executive of BBC News Deborah Turness both resigned.
A BBC spokesman said: “TV Licensing works hard to collect the licence fee and enforce the law efficiently, fairly and proportionately and we are audited on this each year. The National Audit Office reports that we continue to successfully deliver on these measures.”