Just stumbled across 01302 110003 which answers as "Lancashire Constabulary Non Emergency Number" and gives menu for various areas. It says that it is charged at "local rate" by your mobile provider. Quite what that means, I'm not sure...

Anyway, being as it's a national dialling only number, it is not diallable from a BT line. It is also a Doncaster number which is not in Lancashire!  :-?

It'd be interesting to establish which networks do carry these calls.

IIRC, NTL used to - so Virgin Media cable subscribers can probably call them - but what about VM WLR/LLU subscribers?

Do mobile providers (so x-network minutes could be used)?

And what about 1899, 18185, 18866?

Dave wrote on Apr 9^th, 2007 at 1:29am:

Just stumbled across 01302 110003 which answers as "Lancashire Constabulary Non Emergency Number" and gives menu for various areas. It says that it is charged at "local rate" by your mobile provider. Quite what that means, I'm not sure... Anyway, being as it's a national dialling only number, it is not diallable from a BT line. It is also a Doncaster number which is not in Lancashire!  :-?

Why not? I can dial all 01 numbers from my BT line.

derrick wrote on Apr 9^th, 2007 at 9:40am:

Dave wrote on Apr 9th, 2007 at 1:29am: Anyway, being as it's a national dialling only number, it is not diallable from a BT line. It is also a Doncaster number which is not in Lancashire!  :-? Why not? I can dial all 01 numbers from my BT line.

It's to do with the first digit of the local part of the number - if it's a 0 or a 1, it's designated as a 'national dialling number' or some such.

It's obvious that such numbers can't be dialled from the same STD code area without the STD code but I don't understand the concept beyond that.

Anyone know more?

The 0845 1253545 number for Lancashire Constabulary goes through to a menu with an option for each division. The same menu is available on 01772 614444.

A Freedom of Information request reveals that the numbers that the 0845 directs calls to. It turns out that they are all published on the constabulary's website and for all except Southern Division go to the main number at the respective headquarters for that division. Calls to the southern division are apparently put through to Chorley police station (01257 269021).

The database has been amended accordingly, so the menu can be bypassed.