An 83-year-old disabled widower is still waiting for a UK TV license refund after his family says the same granny flat was charged twice for years. The dispute centres on about £1,000 in payments that the family says continued from May 2018 to June 2024.
The claim now stands at £988.50, and the widower’s daughter says the family began trying to recover it in September 2024. TV Licensing has not returned the money, leaving the family to challenge why the flat was charged at all after the daughter started paying separately in April 2018.
April 2018 payments
The family says the daughter moved into the granny flat in April 2018 and began paying for her own licence. They say the widower’s late wife had handled the family’s banking and financial arrangements before her death in September 2020, and that she had already told TV Licensing about the change.
The source says the granny flat is a one-bedroom annexe joined to the home but treated as a separate address. That detail sits at the centre of the refund dispute, because the family says only one licence should have been needed once the daughter started paying for the flat.
TV Licensing dispute
The widower says he only noticed two TV licence payments on his bank statement a few years after his wife died. He then cancelled his direct debit after he could not get past the security questions, and says he later received a letter threatening prosecution instead of a refund.
Ruth Emery, the consumer champion, is the named figure in the story. The source says the family realised in 2024 that the widower was still being charged for the granny flat, and that he had a £375 dentist bill to pay on top of car repairs.
Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance
The family’s dispute also turns on the rules for older people. The source says people aged 75 or over are only eligible for a free TV licence if they are also receiving Pension Credit, while the widower qualifies for Attendance Allowance but is not entitled to a free licence.
That leaves the practical issue unchanged for the family: whether TV Licensing accepts the grandmother flat was single occupancy for the relevant period and refunds the £988.50 taken between May 2018 and June 2024. Until that is resolved, the widower remains out of pocket for payments the family says should never have been collected.
