It was autumn 2020 when someone from TV Licensing knocked on Josiane’s door. She was on maternity leave with her daughter, who was born that January, and had recently moved into a flat of her own, having previously lived in shared accommodation. Her first thought was: “I don’t want to get Covid,” she remembers. “I was terrified of getting ill. I was a single parent, I didn’t have family around, what would happen to my baby?”
She had bought a TV two weeks earlier, but was unaware that she needed a licence for it. “It had always been in my rental agreement,” she says. I meet her in a cafe in Basildon, near her home, with her daughter, who has just turned four, and her boyfriend, Giuseppe. “Maybe people who were born here know these things,” she says, and Giuseppe chips in, “it’s not something they teach you when you move to the UK.”
