Source: Gloucester Echo

Councils rack up bills calling the speaking clock

Monday, March 19, 2012

CASH strapped councils in Gloucestershire have spent hundreds of pounds on phone calls to premium rate numbers, directory inquiries and the speaking clock.

Figures released today show that despite huge cutbacks taxpayers are funding calls to the services.

Cheltenham Borough Council employees made 12,295 calls to premium rate lines in 2011, including airline BMI Baby and personal loan companies.

Finance chiefs even had to step in to demand one member of staff reimburse the authority after racking up a £9.49 bill for a single call.

The total bill for the premium lines came to £1,672.98, with a further 51p incurred by calls to the speaking clock.

And 16 calls to directory enquiries numbers cost the Cheltenham taxpayer £24.33.

[…]

Dave wrote on Mar 19^th, 2012 at 11:45am:

Councils rack up bills calling the speaking clock The total bill for the premium lines came to £1,672.98, with a further 51p incurred by calls to the speaking clock.

A slight disparity between the headline and the article!

This article, while focussing on something relatively trivial (the speaking clock - I didn't even know it still existed!!) does, I believe, make a very important point - that it is not just private individuals who are ripped off by premium rate call charges but many organisations, here they refer to the public sector but also it must affect those in the private sector.  I can think of many reasons why a public sector employee may need to call an organisation with a premium rate number - examples, my GP uses a geo rate but if the surgery needs to call the local hospital that is an 0845 number, I see Essex County Council [i]still[i] promotes its 0845 number as the main contact so a district coucil in Essex would end up paying ECC revenue share for an essential business call at the taxpayers' expense, I could give many, many more examples.   To take again the example of the GP calling the local hospital, that is a much bigger amount out of the primary care budget to provide a smaller amount in revenue share to the secondary care provider (the hospital) while the telecos dance all the way to the bank.   This is a point I've made many times over the years to bodies such as ECC but it has always been ignored; the consistent fact is that the tax payer is paying, directly or indirectly, for public sector bodies which choose revenue share numbers which then have to be used by other public bodies needing to make contact.

This same, of course, is true with the private sector - if a small business needs to call a premium rate number, whether for the private or public sector, that increases their overheads and we all end up paying again.

I think this really summarises why I oppose the use of premium rate numbers generally.

This demonstrates the absurdity of so-called transparency, as it places an undue focus on management issues that citizens can readily understand. There are two key points missing from the article:
[list bull-blacksq]

What proportion of the Council budget (e.g. the cost of employing the individuals who made unauthorised personal telephone calls) does this represent? [list bull-blacksq]

What was the full cost of responding to the FOI requests?
A more useful FOI for Gloucestershire would be to request, for the same period, the volume (total minutes) of telephone calls to the County Hospital, PCT and NHS Care Services provider - on 0845 numbers. Multiplied by 1.5p this would provide the amount that citizens provided as direct subsidy to the NHS in the county, on top of the proper contributions they are making through national taxation.

kasg wrote on Mar 19^th, 2012 at 1:04pm:

Dave wrote on Mar 19th, 2012 at 11:45am: Councils rack up bills calling the speaking clock The total bill for the premium lines came to £1,672.98, with a further 51p incurred by calls to the speaking clock. A slight disparity between the headline and the article!

Compared to the Metropolitan Police's 115,000 calls to Timeline costing £35,000, they apppear to have got their telephone expenditure well under control!

Heinz wrote on Mar 19^th, 2012 at 2:59pm:

Compared to the Metropolitan Police's 115,000 calls to Timeline costing £35,000, they apppear to have got their telephone expenditure well under control!

Yes, the attempts to justify that expenditure were pathetic.

Heinz wrote on Mar 19^th, 2012 at 2:59pm:

Compared to the Metropolitan Police's 115,000 calls to Timeline costing £35,000, they apppear to have got their telephone expenditure well under control!

The Guardian Datablog did an interesting follow up to the story linked to above - … Spend the time reporting real data.

It is very tempting to believe that the only "facts" which matter are those which can be obtained from counting.