Thousands of pensioners to be hit with TV license bill as free license fee ends

Thousands of pensioners are set to receive letters from the BBC within the next few weeks demanding they pay their licence fee.

Free TV licences for those over the age of seventy-five were first introduced by Gordon Brown in 1999 when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

The Labour government covered the cost of the licences but in 2015, George Osborne overhauled the arrangement and agreed with the BBC that it would have to take on the financial burden from 2020.

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Of course, the broadcasting giant hastily announced that they wouldn’t be covering these costs, and therefore the free licence fee would have to come to an end.

The free licence was initially set to end for the age group last August but a free grace period was introduced during the pandemic – the date has since been pushed back to July 31st, 2021.

A BBC spokesperson said: “As we have now reached a situation where over-75s households are in line with the general population, the extended transition period we put in place due to Covid-19 will end on 31 July 2021.”

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The BBC recently revealed that 3.6 million people from the age group have paid for their TV licence – however, around 260,000 are yet to do so.

Because of this, the BBC has said it will provide ‘customer care visits for those who require further assistance’ after the deadline.

The cost of a TV licence increased in April to £159 per year, working out at around 43p a day – anyone who watches or records live TV programmes on any channel, or downloads or watches BBC programmes on BBC iPlayer, is expected to have a valid TV licence.

For more information, visit the official website here.