National Audit Office Report: The BBC collecting the licence fee
"The
BBC welcomes the conclusions of the NAO report and is pleased that
Sir John Bourn has praised the corporation for the good work it
has already done to reduce the evasion rate and strengthen the collection
and enforcement arrangements. The report endorses what we have achieved
in the continuing downward trend of evasion. Since the BBC took
over licence fee collection from the Home Office in 1991, evasion
has halved from 9.9% to between 4% and 4.5% at March 2002. Licences
issued have grown by more than 3.8 million to a record 23.7 million
in March 2002, an increase of 20%.
"TV
licence evasion is against the law. We prefer people to pay their
licence rather than be prosecuted. It is our job to ensure that
those who do pay should not be disadvantaged by those
who don't, so we will continue to pursue all evaders whose actions
make less money available for programmes.
"The
success of our actions is evident in the achievements of the last
financial year (2001-2). Recent figures show we have brought in
an additional £35 million for making programmes by growing
licences by more than 300,000*. We expect evasion to have reduced
significantly again due to the growth in licences and the 12% increase
in evaders caught, up by 50,000 in the year to 448,000 by March
2002.*
"The
BBC was already working on the issues on which the NAO has made
recommendations. We are already:
· visitinging more more unlicensed addresses in evenings
and at weekends, when potential evaders are more likely to be at
home;
· continuing our efforts to ensure that retailers furnish
us with the name and address of everyone who purchases or rents
a television, as they are legally obliged to do - this has been
reinforced by recent prosecutions of Argos, Sainsbury, and Big W
(part of Woolworth);
· appointing new contractors, to improve the extensive database
of unlicensed households and business addresses;
· reviewing our payment schemes to make it as easy as possible
to pay.
"We look forward to working with our new contractors, Capita
and the AMV group. As leaders in their fields, we believe we will
achieve even better results working with them in the future."
Notes to Editors
*These
figures will be confirmed and audited in June.
* The Department of Culture, Media and Sport is revising the statistical
model it uses to calculate evasion. New figures for 2001/2 should
be available by publication of the BBC's Annual Report in July
*The figure for evaders caught is UK-wide
The contract with Capita begins on 1 July 2002 and the contract
with the AMV group began on 1 April 2002.
The
UK National Audit Office website
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external
internet sites
|
