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SilentCallsVictim
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Robert
Thanks for the briefing.
Words are often used oddly to create confusion around this issue. To describe 0845 numbers as being "geographical" because they are dedicated to geographically located offices, rather than there being a single national number, is a new one on me.
You may have a better idea of the history, however I suspect that these numbers remain from the days when they were cheaper for many than geographic numbers that were not “local”.
The use of 0845 (and 0800) numbers by all of the DWP agencies is under review. Various matters bear on this, including some central consideration of the matter on a cross-departmental basis and the imminent announcement of what the Department of Health is going to do about the (beloved) NHS.
There is no need for a public consultation, except on the political question of whether some users of DWP services (and all BT customers) should continue to be required to pay so as to subsidise the costs incurred by taxpayers in providing DWP services. The obvious alternative is that all use of revenue sharing numbers should cease, with 01/02 or 03 numbers used as appropriate.
(We must remember that all BT customers are, in effect, paying for the revenue share on 0845 numbers. This is either through their call plan fee, or through the cross-subsidy that must be present to provide a suitable overall gross margin given the higher costs of originating calls to 0845 numbers, as against the lower charges.)
To find out who loses and benefits, one simply has to consult the relevant tariff tables. Those who pay for BT calls (outside a call plan) benefit from 0845 numbers, due to the perverse effect of the relevant regulations, which cover only part of what BT does. Apart from a tiny number of callers on legacy tariffs living some distance from the relevant office, all others gain no advantage from use of 0845. Many suffer serious financial penalties, largely on account of the revenue share.
In my view, even if the latter group were only perhaps as few as 10% of callers (it is assuredly more than that), then there would still be no justification for this practice, when there is an equitable alternative available.
When addressing the issue of the proportion of calls that come from BT landlines, I have asked officials from the DWP to consider a likely issue, with profound social effects. How many of these callers are service users with their own PAYG mobile, who impose on friends, neighbours, café owners etc. to borrow their phone to call the DWP agencies because their credit is not sufficient?
The situation with the 0800 numbers is different. The taxpayer subsidises the caller’s costs if they are calling from a landline. For calls from mobiles, the caller incurs a premium charge.
Efforts to persuade the mobile companies to subsidise the caller / taxpayer by waiving their charge, as they do for “Helplines”, have so far not been successful. Special efforts are however in hand to get the “crisis loans line” treated as a special case (as distinct from other DWP 0800 numbers) by getting it classified as a “Helpline” for this purpose.
Other than the above, a number of options would therefore seem to remain for the 0800 numbers.
1. Switch to 03 (or geographic) numbers so no-one is surcharged or subsidised. Callers pay for their calls in the “normal” way (perhaps through a package fee which they are already paying).
2. Offer 03 (or geographic) alternatives for mobile callers, so that only landline callers are subsidised by the taxpayer.
3. Extend the subsidy to all, by making a special funded arrangement with the mobile companies not to charge for calls to these numbers.
The latter option would be unprecedented and would perhaps make it harder for the government / people to continue to benefit from the waiver of charges that applies to many services.
Introduction of a fully paid for “true freephone” range of numbers (whereby all calls are paid for by the recipient) has been proposed by some. This would enable the latter option to be put in place using standard features of the telecoms market. One suspects that if there had been sufficient demand for such a range then it would already have been introduced.
Closely related to this issue is the question of who pays the additional costs (whatever they may truly be) of mobile telephony. I believe that mobile users are certainly being subsidised to some degree by landline callers, although others disagree. Higher costs being carried generally by mobile users would enable the present 080 ranges to be extended to also cover calls from mobiles.
All the best with the FOI. The scope of the exemptions that may be deployed to avoid releasing geographic alternatives has already been tested. It has sadly been found to be very wide in some cases, although not in others. (Members with intimate knowledge of these matters may wish to help with examples that may serve as precedent, should the request progress to the more legalistic stages.)
You could consider offering all of the alternatives published in the saynoto0870 database for confirmation. If it were acknowledged that the information was already in the public domain, then many of the grounds for exemption would fall away.
My personal view is that where a geographic number is perfectly acceptable for the function being performed then the non-geographic number should simply be abandoned.
David
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DWP - FOI (Read 46,301 times)
