Evening Standard story:

Residents of serviced apartments often evade the TV licence fee because they do not think they will get caught, it was alleged today.

The claim came as TV Licensing released details of the London boroughs with the highest number of residents who had evaded the annual £147 fee.

The biggest number of TV watchers caught without a licence was in Enfield, closely followed by Croydon, and Barking and Dagenham. Together the boroughs accounted for more than 20 per cent of all evaders caught in the capital in the past 12 months, according to data released today.

More than 28,000 evaders were detected across the 32 boroughs of London from July 2016 to July this year.

In Enfield the figure was 2,246, followed by 1,758 in Croydon and 1,660 in Barking and Dagenham. The lowest rates of evasion in the capital were found in Camden, City of Westminster, and Richmond upon Thames, where fewer than 300 people were caught in each borough.

One TV licensing officer said they had found people living in apartment blocks who thought they could not be detected by officials. 

The officer, who did not want to be named, said: “A lot of Londoners reside in access-controlled addresses. But that’s no reason for these residents to think we can’t visit them — we find concierges and management companies to be of great assistance in arranging visits for our officers.

“Each year we visit every London borough, and by arranging access to controlled addresses we can be sure to visit all the addresses we need to.” 

TV Licensing’s figures show about 15 per cent of people who fail to pay their licence fee believe they do not need to pay because of where they live.