The BBC licence fee, a thread: the BBC ended the universal free licence fee for the over-75s yesterday – a major change that affects many vulnerable people - but guess what? The TV licensing website was down for most of the day. thetimes.co.uk/article/over-7…
The BBC says that it was "always planned" for the site to be down most of the day, but provided no evidence of this when I asked, and it seems rather odd (and cruel) to take the site down deliberately on a day when you introduce the biggest change to the licence fee in 20 years.
One of our brilliant readers, being very law-abiding, went on the site late on Friday night to try to pay, claims that the site said it would be back up by 10am on Saturday then. It was not.
Anyway, this reflects a broader point: the introduction of means-testing for this benefit is a mess. The BBC should not be a welfare body, that's not what it does. And they are forcing the elderly to do something - that for some will mean leaving the house - in a pandemic.
Additionally, no letters with the correct information have been sent out in advance so the elderly are going to get a letter (some in the coming week, some not until September) telling them they need to pay for something starting August 1.
To top it all off, if you ring the helpline, some vulnerable viewers will get told to send their bank statements as evidence that they receive pension credit, which charities warn leaves them at risk of identity theft thetimes.co.uk/article/over-7…
Of course, the real architect of this mess is George Osborne, who did a deal in 2015 putting the BBC in charge of a welfare benefit. A cynic suggested to me that the introduction of this scheme is such a mess that it seems deliberate - the BBC making a point to government.
Eligibility for still getting this benefit is based on if the person claims pension credit. Pension credit is hugely under-claimed. If this encourages more people to get a benefit to which they are entitled, good. But there will be v poor people who give up their TV as a result.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.