4 Groups Who Don’t Have to Pay the £174.50 BBC TV Licence – Are You One?
- TV licence fee has risen to £174.50 – but some people can get it free
- Fines up to £1,000 for watching live TV or BBC iPlayer without a licence
- Catch-up TV on Netflix, Disney+, ITVX etc. doesn’t require a licence
- Check if you fall into one of four exempt or discounted groups
The cost of a BBC TV licence has just gone up to a hefty £174.50 per year – but not everyone has to pay it. If you're already frugal with your entertainment or a savvy saver like me, you'll want to know the four groups who can legally dodge the fee.
The licence covers watching or recording any live TV broadcast, or anything on BBC iPlayer – including on phones, tablets or laptops. But here’s the thing: you don’t need one to watch Netflix, ITVX, Disney+, Amazon Prime, YouTube or other non-BBC catch-up services. So if you’re bingeing Bridgerton rather than Bake Off, you might not need to fork out.
And while the maximum fine for licence dodging can hit £1,000 in the UK (and £2,000 in Guernsey!), certain groups can reduce their bill to zero – legally.
Here are the four groups who don’t have to pay:
People aged over 75 on Pension Credit – You’re eligible for a free TV licence, but you must be receiving Pension Credit (not just over 75).
Care home residents – If you’re living in a residential care home and over 60, a discounted licence costing just £7.50 may apply under an ARC (Accommodation for Residential Care) licence.
Blind or severely sight impaired individuals – You're entitled to a 50% discount, bringing your licence to £87.25.
Students in halls of residence – If your room is not equipped with a separate TV aerial and you only watch catch-up TV (excluding iPlayer), you may not need one. But check carefully – rules are tight.
A warning: if you tell TV Licensing you don’t need a licence, they might still visit to check. You can submit a ‘No Licence Needed’ declaration online – but make sure you’re sticking to the rules.
Tom Church, Co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk the discount code platform said, "Every year I check if I still need a TV licence. So many people pay out of habit when streaming services mean they don’t have to. It’s one of the easiest savings you can make if you fall into an exemption category."
I haven't had a licence for many years I would guess about 7 so have saved a huge amount. If there is anything I want to watch I watch it at my mother's house. I wanted to see the BBC's war of the worlds they produced a few years ago and watched it at my mothers. It was utterly awful, one of the most amateur scifi productions I'd ever seen. Utter rubbish.
Since then there is nothing else I wanted recorded especially, but have enjoyed a few episodes of Impossible and the Wheel occasionally but that is about it and certainly not paying close to 200 pounds to watch a couple of quiz shows. When you look at BBC finaces it appears a huge amount of the TV Licence is to pay for a shortfall in their pensions which are incredibly generous. Personally I'm not interested in paying for excessively generous pensions of other people.
It still disgusts me that by not having a TV licence you can't watch live channels that are financed by advertising this seems to me like criminal behaviour by the government and BBC. The TV Licence doesn't fund those channels and shouldn't restrict access to them. It's rules like this that disgust people and makes those that create laws in this country seem disgusting and working against the people that elected them. Laws should always seem morally defensible. Why should ITV suffer in its finances due to the BBC?
The disgust is like that akin to the removal of the heating allowance Elderly people who are just getting by -Penalised.
You also have the disgusting salaries guaranteed for producing mundane tv. If they feel they are that good ,earn it in the competitive world of advertised television production.
52jm7gkdjq BBC would never survive in the real commercial world with their current costs. It's been said it takes the BBC 3 pounds to do anything that ITV can do for a pound. I.e. they make no effort to get value from contractors, their wages are higher, they are overstaffed. At one point they were paying a ridiculous number of orchestra's they had on their books. In fact a quick look online shows the BBC is paying for 5 full time orchestra's where as most people would assume 1 or none would be enough. I would just employ a orchestra when I needed their services. The BBC don't have a clue what they are doing to be honest. They have a legacy of bad decisions I guess they are locked into and its a huge waste of money.