• iconNews
  • videos
  • entertainment
  • Home
  • News
    • UK News
    • US News
    • Australia
    • Ireland
    • World News
    • Weird News
    • Viral News
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Science
    • True Crime
    • Travel
  • Entertainment
    • Celebrity
    • TV & Film
    • Netflix
    • Music
    • Gaming
    • TikTok
  • LAD Originals
    • Say Maaate to a Mate
    • Daily Ladness
    • Lad Files
    • UOKM8?
    • FreeToBe
    • Extinct
    • Citizen Reef
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
Snapchat
TikTok
YouTube

LAD Entertainment

YouTube

LAD Stories

Submit Your Content

Home> News> UK News

Updated 08:21 22 Aug 2023 GMT+1Published 08:22 22 Aug 2023 GMT+1

Lawyer debunks whether you can really go to prison for not paying your TV Licence

According to the law if you don't pay your TV licence you could eventually go to prison

Joe Harker

Joe Harker

If you live in the UK and own a TV then you've probably got a TV licence and you've almost certainly seen those adverts where they tell you they'll hunt you down if you're not paying.

Brits don't half love a grumble about the cost of the licence fee, but by and large most will pay it and get a damn good deal for what they spend.

For the cost of slightly more than Netflix you get access to the plethora of excellent television we make over here and your money goes towards funding a public broadcaster with a wide range of local and national programming.

Advert

Of course, that's not everyone's cup of tea and some people even make it a point of pride not to pay the fee, but there are many more who watch and don't pay in the hopes that the TV licence police don't rock up at their house.

While the scary adverts make it sound like you'll be in all sorts of trouble for not paying your fee, legal expert Nasir Hafezi has explained exactly what could happen to you for not paying and whether you could really end up in prison.

Legal expert Nasir Hafezi explained how not paying your licence fee could lead to prison, but probably wouldn't.
Community Legal Education

Hafezi explained that not paying your licence fee and watching anything live on any channel or streaming service was an offence.

He explained that you can get prosecuted for watching TV without a licence, so you could end up in court and potentially be fined as much as £1,000 for your transgression.

Advert

However, going to court and getting fined isn't cold, hard jail time and Hafezi laid out that while you could technically go to prison for not paying your fee it would be very unlikely.

To land yourself behind bars you'd need to have a 'refusal to pay the fine' and land yourself in a situation where 'all other enforcement methods have been tried'.

"In short, while you cannot go to prison for simply not paying your TV licence fee, you can go to prison if you deliberately refuse to pay the court fine," the lawyer summed up.

Digging into the figures behind the licence fee, Hafezi said that in 2017 there were 137,913 prosecutions over the TV licence and 72 percent of these were for women.

"Come on guys, all I did was watch Homes Under the Hammer."
Photo by Martin Pope/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Advert

In that year, 30 percent of all women prosecuted were being done for not paying their TV licence, whereas only four percent of men getting in trouble in court were being nailed for non-payment.

Hafezi said this massive disparity was explained in part by women being more likely to be in when one of the TV licence people went to visit people's homes.

However, any of you wondering whether you're about to get locked up and have the key thrown away because you watched Loose Women without a licence should remember that.

According to Full Fact, nobody in England and Wales was jailed for not paying their TV licence or dodging the resulting fine in 2020 or 2021, while in 2019 no more than two people were locked up.

Between 1995 and 2018, a total of 1,449 men and 754 women were jailed over the TV licence, so while women are far more likely to be prosecuted it looks like men are far less willing to relent and pay the fine.

Featured Image Credit: @tiktokstreetlawyer/tiktok/MizLiot/Twitter

Topics: UK News, TV and Film, Crime, BBC

Joe Harker
Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

X

@MrJoeHarker

Advert

Advert

Advert

  • Punishment for not paying your TV Licence is about to drastically change
  • Lawyer debunks whether you can actually go to prison for not paying your TV licence
  • BBC u-turns after 'threat' to send TV Licence enforcement officers to people's homes on Christmas Day
  • Martin Lewis' MSE issues urgent message to anyone who pays for TV Licence

Choose your content:

an hour ago
3 hours ago
4 hours ago
  • an hour ago

    Man completely unaware he was filming first waves of tragic tsunami that went on to kill 220,000 people

    A British holidaymaker captured the first waves of the tragic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on video

    News
  • 3 hours ago

    New footage shows moment only survivor of Air India crash walks away from burning wreckage

    British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh is the only survivor of the 242 on board

    News
  • 3 hours ago

    Navy accidentally discovers 500-year-old ship at bottom of Mediterranean Sea

    It's the deepest wreck found in French waters to date

    News
  • 4 hours ago

    Key information second black box from Air India crash will reveal as investigators find it

    Investigations are ongoing after the plane crashed into a medical college in Ahmedabad last week

    News