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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
National
Jessica Sansome

TV licence fee set to rise from April 1

The TV licence fee is set to rise from April 1, it has been announced.

The fee will rise from £157.50 to £159 - the fifth year a price hike has been made.

This equates to £3.06 a week or £13.25 a month, while the cost of an annual black and white licence will rise from £52 to £53.

It comes after the government announced in 2016 that the licence fee would rise in line with inflation each year for five years from April 1, 2017.

The annual licence fee legally has to be paid for people watching live TV or on BBC iPlayer on any device.

This also applies to watching other live programmes on online TV service such as ITV Hub, All 4, YouTube, Now TV and Sky Go.

Anyone caught not paying their TV licence could be forced to pay a maximum penalty of £1,000.

New figures suggest that up to 750,000 older people have refused to pay for a licence, despite losing their right to a free one, the Sunday Mirror reports.

The BBC then confirmed that 2.7 million over-75s had paid for their licence after three million households were asked to start paying the current £157.50 fee from August 1, 2020.

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