Care Home TV Licence: The ARC Scheme 2026

What ARC is and why it exists

The Accommodation for Residential Care (ARC) concession is the TV licence scheme for care homes and sheltered housing. It exists because the standard licence model would be economically unworkable in care settings: a 30-room care home could not realistically buy 30 standard licences at £180 each (£5,400 in total), and residents who have moved into care typically cannot manage individual licences themselves.

The ARC scheme replaces this with a flat £7.50 per room per year, administered by the care provider on behalf of all residents. The scheme is mandated under the Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004 as amended, with the per-room fee set by the same DCMS settlement process that sets the standard fee. The £7.50 figure has been unchanged for several years despite the standard fee rising; the per-room fee is reviewed at less frequent intervals.

Eligible settings

TV Licensing applies three criteria when assessing whether a setting qualifies for ARC:

• • Primarily residential. Residents live there as their home, not as short-term visitors or patients.
• • Care or support provided. The setting provides some form of warden, scheme manager, care staff, or on-site support.
• • Communal facilities. The setting has shared lounges, dining rooms, or other communal areas in addition to private resident rooms.

Settings that normally qualify include: residential care homes, nursing homes, sheltered housing schemes with a warden or scheme manager, extra-care housing, most retirement villages with on-site staff, and supported-living schemes for adults with learning disabilities or mental health needs.

Settings that do not qualify include: independent retirement flats without on-site support, standard houses-in-multiple-occupation (HMOs), hospital wards, hotels and B&Bs (which fall under the separate HARC scheme), holiday lets, prisons, and university halls of residence (which have separate rules and use individual licences in most cases). See our HMO TV licence guide for shared-housing rules.

How the care provider applies

Application is straightforward but is the care provider's responsibility, not the resident's. The care home operator or sheltered housing scheme manager contacts TV Licensing's business team (the standard 0300 555 0286 number, asking for the ARC team), provides setting details, and submits an application form. TV Licensing assesses eligibility against the three criteria above and issues an ARC licence covering the whole setting.

The licence is renewed annually. The provider is required to maintain accurate records of occupied rooms, because the fee is calculated on the basis of occupied-room count at the renewal date. New rooms added during the year are picked up at the next renewal. Vacant rooms can be excluded from the fee on evidence of vacancy.

Some larger care providers operate multi-site ARC arrangements, with a single head-office licence covering all sites under one master account. This is more administratively efficient for groups operating 5+ care homes. Smaller operators (single-site family-run homes) typically hold an individual ARC licence per setting.

How costs reach the resident

The £7.50/room fee is paid by the care provider but typically passed through to residents as part of their care costs. The mechanics vary by setting:

• • Care homes: Normally rolled into the weekly or monthly care fee without an explicit line item. The £7.50/year works out at around 14 pence per week per room, often invisible in headline pricing.
• • Sheltered housing: Usually included in the service charge along with communal-area maintenance, warden costs, and shared utilities. Service-charge breakdowns sometimes list it separately.
• • Extra-care housing: Treatment varies by scheme, often included in support charges rather than rent.

Disclosure standards are not consistent across the sector. Good practice (encouraged by the Care Quality Commission and equivalent regulators) is for the TV licence cost to be disclosed in fee literature so prospective residents understand what they are paying for. In practice many providers absorb the cost or include it without explicit disclosure. Residents who want to confirm coverage can ask their provider whether the setting is registered under ARC and request confirmation in writing.

Residents who do not watch TV

Residents in ARC settings who do not watch live TV or BBC iPlayer can in principle request that no licence cost be passed through. In practice this is administratively difficult: most providers apply the cost uniformly because tracking individual non-use across many residents is impractical, and the £7.50/year per room is small enough that the administrative cost of differentiation would exceed the saving.

If you are a resident or family member concerned about this, the most useful step is to ask the provider for fee transparency. The £7.50 figure is small in absolute terms (around £0.14/week), so the principle matters more than the cash. Some providers will accommodate a clear request; others will explain that the cost is embedded in their pricing and cannot be unbundled. Both responses are defensible.

Communal TV areas

One of the practical advantages of the ARC scheme is that communal TV areas (lounges, dining rooms, day rooms, activity spaces) are covered by the same per-room licence at no additional cost. A care home with three communal lounges does not need three separate licences for those areas; the ARC licence covers everything.

This contrasts with the standard licence rules, where a property generally needs a single licence per "legal occupation" (an address or self-contained unit). In a care home the legal occupation is the setting as a whole, and ARC recognises this. Care homes therefore do not need to track individual TV installations in communal areas separately.

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