From the BBC:
“BBC licence
fee to rise by £1.50 to £159 from April”
The annual TV
licence fee is to increase by £1.50, from £157.50 to £159, from 1 April 2021. It
is the final - and lowest - annual increase under a deal between the BBC and
the government that has seen the fee rise in line with inflation every year
since 2017. The government must decide how much a TV licence will cost from
2022 onwards. The increase comes eight months after about three million
over-75s lost their entitlement to free TV licences. The new fee works out at
£3.06 per week or £13.25 per month. In 2019-20, it raised about £3.5bn to pay
for BBC services. Licence-fee evasion rose from 6.57% to 7.25% last year,
according to the latest statistics.
'Least
worst' The government had been considering whether non-payment should stop
being a criminal offence. Last month, it decided not to go ahead with
decriminalisation - but that it would "remain under active
consideration". Also last month, new BBC chairman Richard Sharp
said the licence fee was the "least worst" way of funding the BBC.
But he had an "open mind" about how the corporation should be
funded in the future. And it "may be worth reassessing" the
current system.
^ I will never
understand why some countries have TV/Radio License Fees. They may have been
needed in the 1950s when TV was first really coming into its own and needed
money, but not anymore. Many countries are getting rid of TV/Radio License Fees
(Holland, Belgium, etc.), some like the US never had any and some like the UK
are increasing their fees. Germany charges $254 US a year for a License and the
UK charges $216 US a year. That is way
too expensive. ^
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