TV Licensing
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What does your TV Licence fee pay for?
Watch our short video on how your TV Licence fee supports a wide range of programmes, films, and services - on TV, radio and online.
- Eight national TV channels plus regional TV services
- BBC iPlayer - 1000s of live and on demand programmes (including news, sport, dramas, comedy, documentaries, entertainment, and featured films), box sets and exclusive content
- BBC Sounds - a huge range of musical genres, radio stations and podcasts
- Radio stations - 10 pan-UK, six national and 40 local
- BBC website - including News, Sport, Weather, CBBC, Food, Bitesize, Arts, BBC Three
- BBC World Service - TV, radio and online
- BBC apps - like Bitesize, CBeebies, Food, News, Sport and Weather
The licence fee also ensures that all radio, TV and online services are free from commercial advertising and free at the point of use, on a wide range of platforms and devices.
What BBC services does the licence fee fund?
The TV Licence fee is the main source of funding for all of our BBC television, radio and online services. Your TV Licence fee contributes on screen, on air and online.
Each week, 90% of UK adults use BBC services1, from TV channels and BBC iPlayer to national and local radio stations, and entertainment, films on TV, services and information online.
BBC Education
BBC Education delivers the BBC's public purpose to promote education and is central to fulfulling the BBC's mission to inform, educate and entertain.
How is your licence fee spent?
By buying a licence you support the creation of BBC programmes and services, and new ways of bringing them to you. Our purpose is to ensure as much of the TV Licence fee as possible goes towards funding them.
86% of the licence fee is spent on BBC TV channels, radio stations, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds and online services. This includes popular programming like news, documentaries, dramas, comedies, and films on TV.
Monthly spend in 2020/21 – £13.13 per household
Television: £6.42
Radio: £2.29
BBC World Service: £1.28
Other services and
production costs: £1.10
Online: £1.32
Licence fee collection and pension deficit cost: £0.72
The costs of administering the TV Licence are less than you might think. For every £1 taken in licence fee payments, just 5p is spent on collection and pension deficit costs2.
Part of the fee also contributes towards Freeview and Freesat, and towards the UK broadband rollout, funding local TV channels and S4C, the Welsh language TV channel, as agreed with the government as part of the 2010 licence fee settlement.
The Government is responsible for setting the level of the licence fee. In December 2023 the Secretary of State announced that the Government would raise the licence fee by 6.7%, in line with inflation, taking effect from 1 April 2024. This will bring the cost of a colour licence fee to £169.50 per year and a black and white licence fee to £57 per year.
This is a rise of under 3p a day and is the first time the licence fee has increased since 1 April 2021.
The Government decided that the licence fee would rise annually in line with inflation from 1 April 2024 for the remaining four years of the Charter period. The BBC’s current Charter runs until 2027.
1, 2 Source: BBC’s Annual Report 2020/21 (English)