Details of the number of households eligible for assistance from the Digital Switchover Help Scheme in the Copeland area and the number and proportion of eligible households in Copeland who responded to scheme communications and took up the offer of help during the switchover period are set out in the table. No specific forecast was made of the number of households who would take up the offer of assistance in the Copeland area, though projections were made for the UK Scheme as a whole, based on survey work carried out in 2006.
DCMS, Digital UK, Ofcom, the BBC and Digital Switchover Help Scheme Ltd., the wholly owned BBC subsidiary company responsible for the delivery of the Help Scheme, are looking closely at the possible reasons for the level of help scheme take-up as part of a detailed evaluation of the successful programme to switch-off analogue television services in the Copeland area on 14 November 2007. It is too early to draw any firm conclusions.
Whitehaven/Copeland Help Scheme Total Free £40 charge Number of eligible households1, 2, 3, 4 8,600 3,100 5,500 Projected take-up (households)5 5,900 2,700 3,200 Response rate (households)6 6,412 2,431 3,981 Response rate (percentage) 75 78 72 Take-up (households)6 2,808 1,780 1,028 Of whom needed an aerial installation 197 — — Take-up (percentage) — 57 19 Opted out (households)6 3,604 651 2,953 1 The figures for eligible households and forecast take-up are rounded to the nearest 100. 2 Eligibility for help from the Digital Switchover Help Scheme is by household. Household is defined as a ‘benefit unit’ rather than the whole household definition used by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Office to forecast future household growth. The scheme definition of eligible households mirrors Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) definition of a benefit unit: a married couple or couple living together as husband and wife (which from December 2005 includes gay couples) and any dependent children. It excludes adults deemed to be non-dependents who, if eligible, are able to claim assistance from the help scheme in their own right. 3 The estimates of the number of eligible households use data from the Department for Work and Pensions Client Group Analysis for November 2005 for the Copeland parliamentary constituency adjusted by changes in future household and benefits growth for the period from 2005 until the date switchover took place. 4 The estimates of eligible people do not include households where the person qualifying for help under the scheme is registered blind or registered partially sighted and qualifies on grounds of registration rather than on grounds of age or entitlement to disability benefits. 5 The projected take-up figures for Copeland parliamentary constituency are based on the modelling work carried out by DCMS to set the overall budget for the UK-wide help scheme. 6 The eligibility period for the scheme in Whitehaven and Copeland closed on 13 December. These are final figures.