BBC loses £1bn as more viewers cancel TV licence
Corporation makes two million enforcement visits as cost of evasion adds up
The BBC lost more than £1bn through licence fee evasion and cancellation last year despite making two million enforcement visits to people’s homes.
Visits to unlicensed homes in 2024-25 increased by 50 per cent on the previous year but the BBC said it “has become harder to get people to answer their doors”.
One in eight users now evades payment despite using the BBC, at a cost to the corporation of £550m.
According to the BBC’s annual report, the number of TV licences fell by around 300,000 between March 2024 and March 2025.
In total, 3.6 million households now say they do not have a licence because they do not need one, at a potential cost of £617m, according to the Commons public accounts committee, bringing the potential combined lost income to £1.1bn.
The committee said that the BBC was not doing enough to enforce collection of the licence fee.
“Declining household participation and rising evasion has not been successfully tackled, and BBC users not purchasing a licence is unfair to the vast majority of households who do pay theirs,” it said.
The BBC’s funding model has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks after The Telegraph’s investigation into the broadcaster’s bias.
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Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said his party would change the law to strip the corporation of the licence fee, describing the current funding model as “completely unacceptable”.
Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, is also understood to be planning to begin her consultation on the BBC’s royal charter before Christmas, and will consider wholesale reform of the licence fee as part of a “comprehensive look at the way the BBC operates”.
Capita, the BBC’s main contractor for TV licensing, increased the number of visiting officers from 172 to 229 last year, and the number of annual visits per officer from 7,660 to 8,670.
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