Television licensing in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies, any household watching or recording live television transmissions as they are being broadcast (terrestrial, satellite, cable, or internet) is required to hold a television licence. Businesses, hospitals, schools and a range of other organisations are also required to hold television licences to watch and record live TV broadcasts. Since 1 April 2010 the annual licence fee has been £145.50 for colour and £49.00 for black and white. Income from the licence is primarily used to fund the television, radio and online services of the BBC. The total income from licence fees was £3.7428 billion in 2015–16 of which £621.7 million or 16.6% was provided by the Government through concessions for those over the age of 75. Thus, the licence fee made up the bulk (77.5%) of the BBC's total income of £4.827 billion in 2014–2015.

The TV licence fee is a tax collected by the BBC and primarily used to fund the radio, television and online services of the BBC itself. This type of tax (i.e. one raised for a particular defined purpose) is known as a hypothecated tax. Licence Fee collection is the responsibility of the BBC's Finance and Business division.

Although the money is raised for its own use, the BBC does not directly use the collected fees. The money received is first paid into the Government's Consolidated Fund. It is subsequently included in the 'vote' for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in that year's Appropriation Act, and passed back to the BBC for the running of the BBC's own services (free from commercial advertisements). The money also finances programming for S4C and the BBC World Service as well as to run BBC Monitoring at Caversham.

In 1991, the BBC assumed the role of TV Licensing Authority with responsibility for the collection and enforcement of the licence fee. The BBC is authorised by the Communications Act 2003 to collect and enforce the TV licence fee. Section 363 of the Act makes it against the law to install or use a television receiver to watch or record any television programmes as they’re being broadcast without a TV Licence. Section 365 of the same Act requires the payment of the TV Licence fee to the BBC.

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