An increasing number of householders being chased for the TV license fee are using a legal loophole to prevent “enforcement officers” – actually staff of private firm Capita with no legal right to enter homes or search property without permission – from calling on them.

The legal process is “withdrawing implied right of access” to a householder’s frond doorstep, something any householder can do, thus making enforcement officers trespassers if they continue to visit.

It is, unusually, a criminal offence to fail to pay the TV licence and this is an unwarranted status likely to be altered by an overdue Act of Parliament next year.