Hmm ELVIS has left the building, but left his rip-off script.

Dear Mr ****

Your communication relating to our new 08453 has been passed to me by the Chief Constable to investigate and respond to.

Thank you very much for raising your concerns with the Police Authority, and for the useful links which you sent. As a result of your comments and advice we have amended our publicity which should implemented on our website imminently. We are committed to the non-emergency number, as within the county it ensures that callers can call from landlines at local rate. We have checked with the local telephony service providers for landline base phones and they have confirmed that our new -8453 number is indeed charged at local rates. Our view on mobile telephony is that the caller has the choice of contacting the police via a number of media (landline, mobile, email, and even text - something we are investigating) and so when ringing on non-emergency business, it is down to the caller to make the choice of landline or mobile, and a note will be added to publicity to warn callers that charges from mobile networks may vary. However, we have also contacted the five main mobile cellular telephony providers and have confirmed that the maximum/worst case scenarios for charges to call an 08453 number are as follows:

    * Three Mobile = 15p /min flat charge
    * Orange = 10p/ min - 35p/ min (dependant on tariff)
    * Vodaphone = 12p/ min - 15p/ min
    * O2 = 8p/ min
    * T- Mobile - 10p/ min - 40p/ min (pay as you go being the maximum)
    * Virgin - 10p/ min - 15p/ min

We do not consider these to be any more prohibitive than other choices offered to mobile telephone users.

You query whether this 08453 provision makes profit for the police. I can confirm that no revenue is raised by introduction of this number, although there may be in-house savings in due course as we will be able to release costly direct dial number rentals. So it isn't the case that there is a payment to the police to profit from the use of the 08453 number. That information will also be noted on our website or material publicising the number, so that this suspicion is allayed.

You made a very good point regarding the small print on some of our 08453 material. We have looked at this and I confirm that the ASA-recommended small print will be added to our website and publicity material.

Finally, whilst we do not have much communication from overseas via the telephone (most comes via the website), we will publish a non 08453 DDI telephone number to field those calls.

In closing, I advise you that the local introduction of this number is in advance of talks in hand to introduce a national non-emergency number over the next five or so years, currently being trialled in some parts of the country - a venture which will involve other public agencies so that if a call does not relate to a police matter, it can be directly fielded to a colleague from another agency who can deal with it. It's early stages as yet, but this is clearly the way that our communications are going. There is also a huge thirst to contact us via internet and we are investing in exploiting that facility too. We have checked a number of police websites to check our practice against theirs, and we don't appear to be at odds with them.

Introducing this 08453 number was all about making contact with us easier and simpler. Our problem is that we are served by a number of telephone exchanges, and it was simply impossible for our telephony provider to offer us the single number you suggested, in a way which would make it compatible with those various exchanges. This is why the 08453 number is being phased in before the older DDI numbers are phased out.

I hope that this assures you of our resolve to respond to some of the very valid points you made. Thank you for that opportunity

Yours sincerely

****
Staff Officer to Chief Constable

Landline 08543 700700 (ext 2***)