COURTS DEALING WITH TV LICENCE OFFENCES
Somebody seems to have pulled a fast one: TV licence offence cases are now held in centralised TV licensing courts, rather than where the offences occurred. This slow and quiet centralisation means suspected evaders have to go further afield to defend their rights. The fact that someone living near Land’s End, for example, has to do a 340 mile round trip to Weymouth Magistrates Court, is, to me, akin to a denial of justice.
But there is more. Technically, everyone is considered innocent until proven guilty. However, this centralisation of courts appears to be justified by the unwritten understanding that TV licence hearings are in name only as there is an expectation that a guilty plea will have been entered. If a TV licence officer filled a form, the person must be guilty of evasion because everybody must watch live television, thus shifting the burden of proof onto the individual.
Having decided to expose these sly shenanigans, I started by sending an FOI to the Ministry of Justice, asking for a list of courts dealing with TV licence.
3rd UPDATE
I also sent an FOI to the BBC itself, not hoping for much. But lo and behold, they did send me a list of magistrates’ courts that have “heard TV Licensing cases since 1st January 2015”. When I realised they had listed courts that do not deal with TV licence, I asked for courts that have heard adjourned cases (which have been transferred to them from a different court) to be removed, they cleaned up the list, removing no less than 50 names on the list. Here is their final list (previous list and previous updates have been deleted)
Court Name:
Aldershot
Antrim
Armagh
Ballymena
Banbury
Bangor At Newtownards
Barkingside Magistrates
Barnsley
Bedford
Belfast
Beverley And The Wolds
Bexley
Birmingham
Bolton
Bridgend
Brighton
Burton Upon Trent
Bury
Bury St Edmunds
Calderdale
Cambridge
Canterbury
Cardiff
Cheltenham
Chester
Chesterfield
Chichester
Colchester
Coleraine
Coventry
Craigavon
Croydon Magistrates Court
Doncaster
Dover
Downpatrick
Dungannon
Dyfed Powys
Ealing
East Lancashire
Eastbourne
Enfield
Enniskillen
Fareham
Feltham
Folkestone And Hythe
Grantham
Grimsby
Gwent & South Wales
Hammersmith
Harrogate
Hartlepool
Hastings
High Wycombe
Highbury Corner
Huntingdon
Ipswich
Isle Of Man
Kirklees
Lavender Hill
Leeds
Leicester
Limavady
Lincoln
Lincoln District
Lisburn
Liverpool City
Llanelli
Londonderry
Lowestoft
Luton
Magherafelt
Manchester City
Mansfield
Medway
Milton Keynes
Newry
Newtownards
North Durham
North Somerset
North Tyneside
Northallerton
Northampton
Northern Derbyshire
Norwich
Nottingham
Nuneaton
Omagh
Plymouth
Pontypridd
Prestatyn
Reading
Redditch
Redhill
Rotherham
Salford
Scarborough
Sevenoaks
Sheffield
Slough
Slough Law Courts
South East Wiltshire
Southern Derbyshire
Stockport
Strabane
Stroud
Swansea
Tameside
Teesside
Telford & Bridge North
Thames
Uxbridge
Waltham Forest
Warrington
Watford
West Cornwall
West Cumbria
Westminster
Weymouth Wigan & Leigh
Willesden
Wirral
Wirral Borough
Worksop
Wrexham Maelor
York
(this list excludes Scotland because cases are usually heard by a Procurator Fiscal)
In order to build that damned list myself, I emailed all the Magistrate courts in England and Wales. Only some of them contacted me to confirm that they do deal with TV licence offence. Shame on the others.
| COUNTY/POLICE FORCE AREA | COURT AND ADDRESS | FREQUENCY |
| Avon and Somerset | North Somerset Court House, St Georges, Weston-Super-Mare, Avon BS22 7BB | |
| Bedfordshire | ||
| Cambridgeshire | ||
| Cheshire | Warrington Magistrates Court, Arpley Street, Warrington, Cheshire WA1 1LQ | monthly |
| Cleveland | ||
| Cumbria | ||
| Derbyshire | ||
| Dorset, Devon and Cornwall | Weymouth Magistrate Court, Westwey Road, Weymouth, Dorset DT4 8BS | |
| Durham | Peterlee Court House, St Aidans Way, Peterlee, County Durham SR8 1QR | fortnightly |
| Dyfed-Powys | ||
| Essex | ||
| Gloucestershire | ||
| Greater Manchester | ||
| Gwent | ||
| Hampshire | Fareham Magistrates Court, Winston Churchill Ave, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO1 2DQ | fortnightly |
| West Hampshire Magistrates’ Court, 100 the Avenue, Southampton, Hampshire, SO17 1EY | ||
| Hertfordshire | ||
| Humberside | Beverley East Yorkshire Magistrates Court, Champney Rd, Beverley, North Humberside HU17 9EJ | fortnightly |
| Kent | Medway Magistrates, Court House, The Brook, Chatham ME4 4JZ | monthly |
| Sevenoaks Magistrates Court, Morewood Cl, London Rd, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 2HU | monthly | |
| Lancashire | Blackburn Magistrates’ Court, Northgate, Blackburn, Lancashire BB2 1AA | weekly (Mondays)
option for a trial to be heard at a Courthouse within Lancashire near where the defendant lives, upon request. |
| Wigan & Leigh Magistrates’ Court Darlington St, Wigan, Lancashire WN1 1DW | Thursday | |
| Leicestershire | Leicester Magistrates, 15 Pocklingtons Walk, Leicester LE1 6BT | monthly |
| Lincolnshire | ||
| London (Metropolitan Police) | Highbury Corner Magistrates Court, 51 Holloway Rd, London N7 8JA | forthnightly |
| Lavender Hill magistrates’ court, 176A Lavender Hill, London SW11 1JU | monthly | |
| Merseyside | Wirral Magistrates, Chester Street,Birkenhead, Merseyside CH41 5HW | |
| Norfolk | ||
| North Wales | ||
| North Yorkshire | ||
| Northamptonshire | Northamptonshire Magistrates Court, Campbell Square, Northampton NN1 3EB | |
| Northumbria | ||
| Nottinghamshire | ||
| South Wales | Merthyr Court, Glebeland Place, Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales CF47 8BH | |
| South Yorkshire | Doncaster Magistrates Court, College Road, Doncaster, South Yorkshire DN1 3HS | |
| Staffordshire | Burton-upon-trent magistrates Court, Horninglow Street, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire DE14 1PA | |
| Suffolk | ||
| Surrey | Croydon Magistrates’ Court, Barclay Road, Croydon, Surrey CR9 3NG | weekly (Fridays) |
| Sussex | Hastings Magistrates Court, Law Courts / Bohemia Rd, Hastings TN34 1ND | Every fourth Monday of a month |
| Thames Valley | Reading Magistrates Court, Castle St, Reading, Berkshire RG1 7TQ | |
| Warwickshire | Nuneaton Magistrates Court, Vicarage Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire CV11 4JU | weekly |
| West Mercia | ||
| West Midlands | ||
| West Yorkshire | ||
| Wiltshire |
At the end of the letter from the BBC, Rupinder Panesar, Freedom of Information Advisor, TV Licensing Management Team, added:
If you plan to publish this information online, please include the statement overleaf: “A TV Licensing spokesperson said: “TV Licensing prefer not to prosecute and only send cases to court as a last resort. We know some people may find it difficult to pay but we do all we can to help, including offering weekly cash payment schemes. TV Licence evasion cases account for a significantly smaller proportion of court time than their numbers might suggest – 0.3% in the most recent data available as noted in the Perry Review of licence fee enforcement. Please see page 10 for details.”
As the BBC quote omit the first two sentences of a paragraph, I would like to reproduce them too, for balance:
“In 2013, there were 178,332 prosecutions for failure to hold a TV licence. This represented approximately 11.5% of all defendants proceeded against before the Magistrates’ Court.”
End the BBC licence Fee & Stop the Internet Tax 
I pay TV license simply because I have no other option – I cannot choose for it not too be on my TV list. If I could remove it from it and not pay I really would. At the moment I am forced to pay it
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I stopped paying, I removed my cable and now I only watch catch-up TV. It’s a bit annoying for sports events but I really didn’t want to give one more penny to the BBC.
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I see no point in having TV licence i only use catch up TV .I am angry that though i was only using tv without cable they still sent me to court and done time in prison
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Did you? When was that? Give me more details.
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This isnt true
“A TV Licensing spokesperson said: “TV Licensing prefer not to prosecute and only send cases to court as a last resort.
We had purchased a tv licence and back in febuary had a visit from tvl with a search warrant (seems they lied on oath to get one). Didn’t actually believe it was a real warrant so sent them on their way, turns out it was real and now they have summonsed us to court for obstruction of a warrant!
I feel like cancelling the tv licence (which was actually valid from the day before they applied for the warrant) as its going to be an expensive long day in court they tell us
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I know, I’ve heard similar stories. Bastards…
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As far as I know the primary way they find people for failure to pay these license fees is from a list of former license holders. It’s sort of astonishing that they assume that 95% of the population watch TV, I know of several people who either do not watch live TV, watch videos online, or watch recorded content, and this is in Canada where they have no license fees. Is it not sort of fraudulent to call these TV License fees when the only recipient of the money is the BBC? Isn’t it sort of unethical to be forced to give this money to a broadcaster who you do not watch, when you might be watching a competitor who receives none of this money?
In the end there is a simple way to solve this, privatize the BBC, and either go with the PBS model from the U.S, of having viewers voluntarily fund programing (which is tax deductible there) or start running commercials. The third option is to put BBC programs online, and behind a paywall, and just go off the air, think of how many millions that would save? I have to wonder how much these collection agencies, courts, and incarceration actually costs monetarily, has anyone investigated this?
The whole concept is antiquated, it’s from a time when the Beeb, like the Canadian CBC, was the only game in town, but that was almost 100 years ago. The world has changed, the very concept of state broadcasters has the stink of authoritarian propaganda organs, and should suffer the same fate as their cousins in the Soviet Union.
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I agree!
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