Mid Beds District Council and South Beds District Council are moving to a single
   unity authority called Central Beds District Council as of 01 April 2009.

   see http://www.centralbeds.gov.uk/

   They will be moving to 0300 300 8XXX numbers as a result for all customer
   facing departments ie main customer services number is now 0300 300 8000.

   See it is possible to get away from 08 !!!

   Also proves the early bird gets the best numbers !!

   (yes in a small way I am involved in making this happen)

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Jul 5^th, 2008 at 10:05am:


As an 03 number will cost Council Tax payers money on every single call the council receives I still don't see why they couldn't use a geographic phone number that would cost them nothing to operate?

Since the unanimous adoption of a resolution by the full council banning the use of 084/7 numbers in July 2005 I am not aware of any adverse consequences that have ensued for my local authority - Mole Valley District Council.

Surely only large national operations like HMRC, DWP etc have any need to use 03 numbers.  I can't see what exactly is wrong with a local council sticking to using a local phone number?

NGMsGhost wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 1:38pm:

This is a fair question which is only partly answered in the document referred to above. Whilst this does refer to benefits it does not fully explain how these are justified against the cost.


loddon wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 2:40pm:

We have heard that NGNs offer a greater facility for network queuing and perhaps re-direction out-of-hours.


I am happy to be added to this declaration of ignorance.


I suggest that we need to clearly understand the respective limits and costs of applying such features on geo numbers before we can offer advice on the choice between a geographic and 03xx number. We also need to understand the scale of the likely benefits before we can determine the quality of a decision to utilise such features and to choose disassociation from a particular geographic locality.

There is doubtless much waste of public money, which is rightly condemned. There will also be differing views on the scale of likely benefits. Our focus here is however on costs that are wrongly carried by service users through use of revenue sharing numbers.

In the absence of detailed knowledge and understanding of any particular circumstance and the wisdom of any particular decision, I am content to simply celebrate any decision to adopt a 03xx, rather a 084x, number.

South Bedfordshire District Council is now promoting its new number:

http://www.southbeds.gov.uk/Images/Housing%20Matters%20Autumn%2008_tcm6-29956.pd...

Quote:

That is directly quoting from Ofcom:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/features/03numbers

Which makes it even more surprising that they use the term "national rate". Why do they have to persist in using that, which implies it is more expensive than calls to "local" numbers? Even more alarming is that 0870 is often still referred to as national rate.

"Standard landline" is the best I can think of at the moment, if the use of "geographical" is considered unsuitable for the general public. "Rate" should be avoided as these calls are often not charged on a per-minute basis. So they could say, "Calls to this number are charged [the same] as calls to a standard landline".