Fair ?

The BBC Board, acting unwillingly as a subset of government, has decided that free licences for the Over 75s will be limited to households where one or more residents is in receipt of Pension Credit, from 2021/22.

The best guess at how much this will cost Auntie over that year is £250m. But the Board thinks it's got it covered already, by using...

a. £150m a year from the licence fee which has previously been used to support the roll-out of rural broadband – this money would otherwise have been used to develop BBC programmes and services; and

b. Around £100m a year from planned savings that are part of the current programme of efficiency and cuts. These savings will not now be available to develop BBC programmes and services.

Elsewhere, the BBC's Decision Document, perhaps inadvisedly, gives a shopping list of closures that might have been used to get to a bigger total.

a: BBC Two (c£270m savings)
b. BBC Four (c£30m savings)
c. BBC News Channel (c£20m savings)
d. Radio 5live and 5live Sports Extra (c£45m savings)
e. BBC Scotland channel (c£30m savings)
f. Around 10 BBC local radio stations (c£15m savings)