TV Licence Fee To Rise By £10.50

8th December 2023

The current TV licence fee of £159 will increase by £10.50 - a rise of 6.6% - the government has announced.

It is less the £1 per month increase.

The figure has been determined using September's rate of inflation, rather than an average across the last year.

Due to the recent fall in inflation, that means the £169.50 figure is less than the BBC and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had anticipated.

The decision to raise it by a smaller percentage will leave an expected funding gap of around £90m.

The government is also launching a review of the BBC's funding model, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer told MPs.

The increased fee will come into effect in April, having been frozen at £159 for the past two years.

The BBC's funding was £3.70bn in 2013 and £3.74bn in 2023.

If the licence fee had increased with annual inflation, the corporation would have an extra £1.16bn in funding from the fee alone.

The number of households paying licence fee has dropped by 437,000 over last 12 months.

While some have refused to pay, that figure is partly down to the number of elderly people who are unaware that they now have to buy a licence.

The government transferred the financial responsibility of free licences for the over-75s to the BBC in 2019.

Elderly people are now required to pay the licence fee unless they are on pension credit. As nearly 950,000 pensioners receive credit, covering their licences costs the BBC around £150m annually.