Pulling plug! Great-gran slams Council's digital TV fee
Published: 24 June 2010
by TOM FOOT
A GREAT-grandmother has told Camden Council she will not pay its “ridiculous” compulsory charge for digital TV.
Ninety-year-old Lucy Day, who has lived in the Burmarsh social housing block in Marsden Street, Queen’s Crescent, for 40 years, was outraged to discover an extra 87p fee on her weekly council tax bill.
The Town Hall is charging around 22,000 tenants £45 a year to setup and maintain digital television receptors and cable fitted in council buildings.
But the digital switchover – when old-style aerial televisions stop working – is not scheduled to begin until 2012.
Mrs Day said: “I am damned if I am going to pay for something I haven’t got. It’s ridiculous. I’m 90 years old, who knows what will happen tomorrow?
“I am happy with my wildlife documentaries and quiz games – I watch the Weakest Link and Countdown. I don’t need all these new channels. ”
The equipment has been installed into council buildings by contractors Lakehouse as part of the Decent Homes refurbishment programme.
The council estimated in January that more than 22,000 of its properties were served by communal aerials in need of updating.
Mrs Day said she was not been asked whether she wanted them fitted or informed that she would have to pay.
“The wires they’ve put in here look a bloody mess,” she added. “All they are doing is collecting dust.”
A council spokeswoman said: “By 2012 the analogue television signal system will be switched off across the UK and a new digital system put in place. This means that anyone who cannot receive a digital television, cable or satellite signal will be unable to watch television.”