Television licencing property checks are normal in the UK as well - I've had a few inspectors demand access to my home to verify that I wasn't watching TV illegally.
For a long time there used to be "TV detector vans" that would drive around areas supposedly detecting TVs in use in unlicensed properties - I believe it was ( still is? ) illegal to publish any information surrounding the efficacy of these vehicles ( Obviously because they don't work ).
In the days of analogue TV, they almost certainly did. Analogue CRT televisions put out a tremendous amount of spurious RF. The intermediate frequency from the receiver's local oscillator was easily detected from some distance, even with inexpensive amateur equipment. With more sophisticated equipment, it wouldn't be difficult to see exactly what was on the screen using Van Eck phreaking. With modern technology, you could build a working TV detector bicycle using nothing more than an Android tablet, an RTL-SDR stick and a home-made yagi.
I think that the secrecy was about how often TV detection technology was actually used. The BBC research department could have knocked together a working TV detector van in a spare afternoon, but it would have been prohibitively expensive to operate. Why send out two skilled broadcast engineers in a van full of equipment, when an empty van being driven by a debt collector will do the job?
Yes, I was saying that the vans themselves obviously don't work, evidenced by the legislation - not that it's technologically infeasible. It does however reflect on the nature of the UK that an effectively private organisation is granted legal protections to assist them in enforcing a monopoly over a technology with a racket, that looks a lot like something out of a dystopian fantasy.
> I've had a few inspectors demand access to my home to verify that I wasn't watching TV illegally
Ask to see their warrant or tell them to get lost. They have no power of entry, possibly unless accompanied by the po po (in which case ask the same question and "Am I legally obliged to comply with this officer?", while videoing them and their response).
> Enquiry officers do not have any legal powers to enter your home without a search warrant granted by a magistrate (or sheriff in Scotland).
> You have no obligation to grant entry to an enquiry officer if you don’t wish to do so.
