§ Mr. MacShaneTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many concessionary television licences for persons living in warden-assisted homes have been(a) granted and (b) withdrawn in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available. [118366]
§ Janet Anderson[holding answer 10 April 2000]The following information is provided by the BBC, which has statutory responsibility for the administration of the television licensing system:
Year Number of accommodation for residential care concessionary licences issued1,2 1992–93 635,703 1993–94 655,165 1994–95 677,104 1995–96 641,136 1996–97 650,013 1997–98 651,822 1998–99 645,876 1999–2000 654,191 1 Qualifying accommodation includes residential and nursing homes, sheltered housing schemes and almshouses. 2 Records of concessionary television licences issued moved from a wholly manual system to a computerised system in 1996. This change highlighted the inaccuracy of the earlier system and is thought to account for much of the fall between 1994–95 and 1995–96. A full ten-year record of the number of concessionary licences issued would require manual extraction of information from paper records in the initial years. No records are kept of the number of concessionary licences withdrawn, nor can such information be extracted from existing data, as it is not possible to distinguish between withdrawal of the concession and other reasons for non-renewal.