London top for tv licence evasion

New figures in the Evening Standard show that the borough of Newham in East London had the most tv licence evaders in Britain last year. A tv licence is complusory in the UK and the licensing authority says ‘you need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, set-top boxes, video or DVD recorders, computers or mobile phones to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV.’

Currently a licence costs £135.50 a year and 3,914 households in Newham were busted for not having one last year and face a £1,000 fine. Another London borough, Brent, had the second highest number of non-payers with 3,362 and London had more licence evaders than Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow combined.

Places like Newham and Brent are poor areas with a high concentration of immigrants so you can understand them not realising Britain has a crackpot law saying who need a licence to watch tv. If they can get away without paying good luck to them.

Anybody thinking of spending sometime living in the UK will soon have a tv licensing form dropping through their door, and as most people are honest and pay, its fairly easy for the authorities to target houses and apartments that don’t have a record of buying one.