Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many single justice procedure notices have been issued by the Television Licensing Authority in each year since 2015.

The requirement to hold, and pay for, a television license is set out in the Communications Act 2003 and the Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004. Under the Communications Act 2003, the BBC is responsible for the collection and enforcement of the TV licensing system.

The BBC prosecutes most TV license evasion cases using the Single Justice Procedure (SJP). The SJP is a more proportionate way of dealing with straightforward, uncontested, summary-only non-imprisonable offences which almost exclusively result in a financial penalty.

The data we hold shows the number of defendants prosecuted by the Television Licensing Authority and dealt with via SJP for TV license evasion cases each year since 2015. This can be found in the table below: