Television Licences: Non-payment

(asked on 6th February 2015) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many people received custodial sentences in the last 10 years, broken down by gender, for the non-payment of fines relating to television licences; for how many of those people this was their sole offence; and how long the average sentence was.


Answered by
Lord Faulks Portrait
Lord Faulks
This question was answered on 18th February 2015

Offenders found guilty of TV licence evasion may be sentenced to a fine and there is an expectation that fines are paid immediately where possible. HM Courts and Tribunals Service takes the issue of fine enforcement very seriously and is working to ensure that the recovery of fines is a continued priority nationwide. Failure to pay a fine imposed for TV licence evasion can lead to committal to prison for fine default, but only as a last resort once all other methods of recovering the money have been considered or tried and have failed.

Information about the length of time for which men and women were committed to prison for failing to pay a fine imposed for non-payment of a TV licence, since 2005, is provided in the table. The data relates to the fine defaulter's principal offence: information about whether it was their sole offence is not collected.

Fine defaulter receptions for non-payment of a TV licence, by sex and average sentence length, England and Wales, January 2005- September 2014
200520062007200820092010(1)201120122013Jan-Sep 2014
Fine defaulter receptions for non-payment of a TV licence
Males2121171911..10251510
Females83101619..38261724
Average sentence length in days
Males1414112017..20192519
Females176171617..24252318
Data Sources and Quality
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
(1) During 2010 there was a disruption to the supply of the prison receptions data which is used for the purpose of statistical reporting.
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