The Public Accounts Committee of the UK House of Commons has warned that if the collection and enforcement of the licence fee is not modernised, the BBC risks compliant fee payers questioning the fairness of the system.

In a new report on the BBC’s accounts, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the broadcaster’s mission to ‘serve all audiences’ is at risk, and that while the BBC is a trusted institution, its relevance across the UK is under pressure.

It suggests that the BBC is not doing enough to enforce collection of the licence fee. While licence fee enforcement has traditionally relied on household visits, this approach is becoming less effective. Officers made 2 million visits to unlicensed homes in ’24’-’25 – a 50 per cent increase on the previous year – but this has not translated into higher sales or successful prosecutions. The BBC told the PAC it has become harder to get people to answer their doors compared to five years ago, which limits enforcement effectiveness, and that it has moved to a more marketing-led approach – but prosecutions for licence fee evasion have been in long-term decline since 2017.

Declining household participation and rising evasion has not been successfully tackled, and BBC users not purchasing a licence is unfair to the vast majority of households who do pay for theirs. Licence fee evasion and households not purchasing a licence together represented over £1.1 billion (€1.24bn) in potential lost income in ’24–’25. The PAC is recommending the BBC develop and implement approaches to collection and enforcement suited to monitoring online viewing.

In a time of intense competition for attention, younger audiences are choosing other media providers, putting the BBC’s mission to ‘serve all audiences’ under pressure. Only a little over half of younger people feel the BBC reflects them – while the BBC’s digital-first strategy shifting to the use of platforms like TikTok risks alienating non-digital audiences. When questioned on the timeline for a switchover from broadcast to online, the BBC told the PAC that without universal affordable broadband, a switchover would be “a self-inflicted wound” and reiterated the BBC’s commitment to maintaining significant broadcast services during the transition. The PAC is seeking an explanation from the BBC of how it will ensure access with all audiences across all platforms, in line with its role as a universal public service.

While the BBC is a trusted institution, gaps remain in how well different audiences feel represented. The PAC questioned the BBC on whether choices labelled “local”, such as moving operations to Manchester or Birmingham, are genuinely relevant to smaller communities, particularly in radio and local news. The report stresses that local radio remains a lifeline for older audiences, and that in Sheffield, for example, “local” should mean “Sheffield”, rather than pooled content from larger hubs. The restructuring of regional news hubs may have unintentionally diluted connections with the communities the BBC aims to serve, and it acknowledged it could work to ensure reporters remain truly local, rather than stretched over larger footprints.

The BBC has sought to offset reduced licence fee income by boosting returns from its commercial arm. But the BBC does not provide clear information about its commercial returns. While the BBC says decisions such as the recent acquisition of Britbox are based on assessments of expected returns, these assessments are not visible to Parliament. The PAC welcomes the BBC’s commitment to report commercial returns clearly in the future.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said: “The BBC is an organisation under severe pressure. Its own founding aspiration to be a truly universal broadcaster reflecting all its viewers means that this pressure, from both within and without, is inherent in its mission. Our report offers a snapshot of the BBC’s efforts to deliver value for money as it seeks to thrive in an increasingly fragmented media landscape, and illustrates the tensions it must navigate in multiple areas of its business – in efficiently collecting the licence fee; in providing that universal service; in staying relevant to its audiences.”

“On the licence fee, our report makes clear that the ground is shifting beneath the BBC’s feet – the traditional enforcement method of household visits is seeing fewer and fewer returns at a time of heightened competition for almost every aspect of the BBC’s activities. Our report shows that without a modernised approach focused more on online viewing, the broadcaster will see faith in the licence fee system ebb away. Similarly, while efforts to distribute itself more equitably across the nation are welcome in principle, the BBC must ensure that greater distribution does not equal greater dilution of the authentic local quality of its coverage.”

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Tags: BBC, Licence fee, Public Accounts Committee