Television licensing in the United Kingdom
TV Licensing is the umbrella brand for the public performance of the companies that are responsible for the collection of license fees in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
History
By the year 1991, the collection of the license fee in the UK task of the Interior Ministry was. In practice, the police authorities were responsible for the registration beings, but especially for the control of tuition fees, which to this day influences the public debate about the fees being sustainable.
In 1991, the fees being was completely transferred to the state broadcaster BBC to simplify administrative procedures. Within the BBC then an internal organizational unit was established under the name of TV Licensing Authority, the structurally very similar to the German GEZ. As part of the general outsourcing of public functions in the UK and the TV Licensing Authority was privatized.
Today's structure
TV Licensing is today mainly of four companies.
Capita Business Services Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Capita Group, based in London, is responsible for most of the administrative tasks and assumes the lead role within the group of companies. In general, the term TV Licensing is based on this business in the first place.
Revenues Management Services Ltd. is responsible for the processing of cash payments while the customer is on the ground in the hands of the PayPoint Collections Ltd. Public relations and marketing have finally been transferred to the AMV Consortium.
The official legal and technical supervision of the entire group is responsible to be the BBC.
Fee system
In the United Kingdom, the charges are collected exclusively for the holding of television sets, regardless of their actual use. Although these also serve the financing of radio programs, the BBC is the possession of radio devices not charge you.
The amount of the annual license fee is a color TV and £ 145.50 for a black and white device £ 49.00 (as of 03 /2011).
Violations of the obligation to pay fees set - unlike in Germany - criminal offenses which are very sensitive legal consequences can lead to ( prison sentences in individual cases). So, for example made yet in 1994 at least 57 % of all criminal court convictions of women due to a charge of toll fraud. Since privatization, these figures are, however, strong back, as are uncovering crimes charges no mandatory measures longer available.
Criticism
The fees fund the BBC is widely accepted by the British people, fundamental criticism of the system is therefore rare.
However, frequently the subject of public debate are the practices employed by TV Licensing to make better use of the potential participants. Similar to the German GEZ TV Licensing is also here now largely reliant on self-developed strategies. Usually acquired address material is compared with the list of participants in the market, followed later by home visits, where supposedly various intimidation tactics or trick questions are used. This criticism, however, is at least partially also historically justified, especially since prior to 1991 to detect toll fraud police measures such as house searches were used, which has left the population in a permanent negative image.