Perhaps the time has come to introduce a students rate for a BBC Licence, since at the moment detector vans hitting university "digs" are in for very rich pickings.

I learned an interesting fact the other day, which is not entirely irrelevant here.

My mother's now 97, and following a stroke last year we've just moved her into a home where she can be looked after properly, 24/7.

As part of the 'clearing out' operation, we found her TV License, which acknowledged her as having a 'free license' for that residence.
But since this was now 'invalid' (as she's no longer resident at that address) I wanted to let the TV Licensing organisation know ... only to find that she still HAS to be issued with a new license for the room she lives in at the home, as each occupied room has a door on it!!

Not that this would make the work of the detector vans any more difficult, as many of the rooms have their TVs switched on almost as soon as they wake the patients up each morning.

Seemingly it doesn't matter that in my mother's case she's 97 years old (and is therefore entitled to watch 'for free' anyway!) or even that she's almost blind now!  They don't issue Care homes with a blanket license to cover all the old inhabitants - I guess that would be just too simple!

Ah well. I suppose "it all makes work for the working man to do" (to quote Flanders & Swann).

I guess that since most people coming here were members of staff, I can say with certainty that as a young technician we were told very early on in our 'career' that it was 'a sackable offence' to be caught without a TV license (it also covered Radio back in the day!!).
Can't say if that was the case for every recruit ... but it's my guess we were all 'frightened' into getting one early on in our time with Auntie, and I should imagine we all saw the benefit of contributing towards what programmes we were making, setting a good example, etc.

I confess to never having seen an actual License Detector van 'per se'  but I do remember we were shown over one of those Commer vehicles that were sent around the country to survey reception of both TV and Radio signals, and one of the people who crewed that vehicle did say that if they were seen in an area that new license applications always went up around there!!

I know Reception testing isn't the same thing, but whether the staff were from BBC Transmission (as it was then) or simply Reception Advice, they were talking to 'the trade' (be that TV set rental companies or aerial erectors, it doesn't matter too much!) and they could easily have gotten information as to who had started to rent a new set or had an aerial put up (this was in the days when 'ordinary mortals' couldn't generally get hold of TV aerials/install them for themselves!) and that information could have got back to the Government department that dealt with such things. [I do seem to remember that if you bought a TV set, the shop selling 'had' by law to take your address details and they were submitted to the Licensing people (wasn't it the GPO back in those days?).

I suppose if it was 'discovered' that someone had bought/started to rent a new set, and they hadn't also applied for a license, that 'the Men from the (appropriate) Ministry' might call on the family and make them aware that a license was now required. Whether they were in a van (which could perhaps have been ex-WD, with a DF-type aerial atop!!) and that would have been enough to let people know that they could be 'found out'!!

About 10 years ago, my previous house had a change of postcode.

Cue confusion at the licensing database!

A detector van turned up in our street and the rather officious occupants proceeded to knock on all the doors.

I don't know about the other houses, but I'd dutifully informed them of my postcode change, so was surprised when I was accused of having no license.

It turned out that the database computer expected me to have two licenses, one for each postcode!

I explained the situation, they went away and I thought that would be the end of it.

But 6 months later, we had a repeat performance.

Then again after 12 months.

I then moved house, so for all I know, it's still happening!

...and we must presume that DetectorVans Ltd were(still are?)  a contracted company on a service level agreement with the BBC?