The TV licence fee will rise by £5.50 to £180 a year in a bid to ‘help keep the BBC on a stable financial footing’, the Government said today in another cost-of-living blow.
Viewers reacted with anger after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) revealed the 3.12 per cent rise from £174.50 would come into force from April 1.
The hike was calculated using the annualised average of the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation rate from October 2024 to September 2025, which was 3.14 per cent.
Viewers bombarded social media with outrage at the rise, as some claimed they simply would not pay, while Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: ‘The BBC has a death wish.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘With families facing soaring bills and taxes, it is indefensible to demand more money for an institutionally biased BBC. Reform UK would overhaul a national broadcaster that is clearly unsustainable in its current form.’
Senior Conservative MP Nigel Huddleston, the shadow culture secretary, added: ‘It is increasingly difficult to see how the BBC can justify any rise in the licence fee when serious questions remain over its impartiality and governance.’
The new licence fee is higher than the streaming fee for Netflix in the UK, which costs between £5.99 and £12.99 a month, equating to £71.88 to £155.88 a year.
Prime Video costs £8.99 per month or £95 a year as part of an Amazon subscription; while Disney+ is £5.99 to £14.99 a month, the equivalent of £71.88 to £149.90 a year.
The cheapest annual cost of subscribing to Netflix, Prime and Disney+ combined is currently £238.76 a year, which is only £58.76 or 33 per cent more than the licence fee.
Mr Huddleston added: ‘At a time when households are under real financial pressure from Labour’s economic mismanagement, asking people to pay more for a service that is losing trust is simply not credible. Pushing through another increase will only accelerate this decline.
‘Instead of demanding more from struggling families, the BBC should be focusing on getting its house in order.’
William Yarwood, media campaign manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, also said: ‘Taxpayers will be rightly furious that the licence fee is going up.
‘After a year in which our state broadcaster brought itself into disrepute on what seemed like a weekly basis, it is shocking that bosses thought an increase in fees was even remotely appropriate.
‘Only more reason for Lisa Nandy to tell the Beeb that their days of relying on a TV tax to fund their operations are coming to an end.’
News of the price increase comes after the BBC was revealed to have lost more than £1 billion in a year as a record one in eight households refused to pay the fee.
The BBC licence fee should be discarded because we watch it via our provider – in my case, my Sky provider – and besides, it’s all full of repeats and woke rubbish, and the BBC are not helping themselves because now, more people will refuse to pay it.
You do not have to let TV inspectors into your dwelling unless they have a search warrant. If they do not have a search warrant, you do not have to permit them entry to your home. However, this does not mean they will not go away and come back with a search warrant – by then the offending TV is gone, or the plug is cut off.
Also, I’ll never understand how the BBC have the cheek to raise the licence fee, when numerous people want it scrapped – perhaps it’s one last hoorah before their closure.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 