Lord Citrine (who wrote the definitive guide "A. B. C. of Chairmanship) must be turning in his grave. To allow an amendment that defeats the original motion is just downright bad chairmanship. Those who don't agree with the motion do have the option of voting against it.

It seems the councillors on Mole Valley District Council in Dorking must have more common sense than Leeds given that in the motion at their July 2005 full council meeting they unanimously voted to not use 084 and 087 prefixed numbers for council services.

Of course it helped that only one 0845 number had been so far set up on an ad-hoc basis by the IT manager (and not with the blessing of any council committee) for a trial of the new wheelie bin scheme and that it was one with no long term contract.  It was fortunately a not big expensive switchboard type contract with lots of penalties for cancelling and that anyone was going to get egg on their face about having to explain their earlier actions on.

Even so a lot of councillors were initially sceptical there was anything wrong with 0845 when the matter was first raised but when they had all the problems properly explained to them by one of their more knowledgeable councillor colleagues they all unanimously came on board (all three parties - Conservatives, Lib Dems and Independents)

Can we asssume that they have less sensible councillors in Leeds or did this councillor not approach the matter in the correct way by putting it forward as a party political attack on the aministration rather than referring to the COI Contact Centre Guidance and expressing the motion in terms of making sure that the COI guidance was complied with and that there should be no barriers to accessing the council's services in terms of not being able to afford the costs of the phone call.

I always thought that Yorkshire was a land of plain speaking but it seems this is no longer the case.

Perhaps I need to email the councillors involved to point them to the more successful opposition to the use of these numbers that took place on Mole Valley District Council.

Dave wrote on Apr 29^th, 2008 at 8:23pm:


It seems the motion has been effective after all, if not in a direct way.

I would suggest the councillors responsible for this motion now take the matter to the local newspapers for further discussion.

Having moved to 0845, Leeds City Council is now moving back to conventional geographical numbers.

Report of the Assistant Chief Executive (Planning, Policy and Improvement)
Executive Board
Date: 16 April 2008
Subject: Numbering Strategy and Golden Number

<<
2.0 Background Information

2.1 Stage 1 of the Customer Strategy Delivery Programme entailed the development of a Corporate Contact Centre for Leeds City Council and the migration of existing ‘call centres’ into the new centre. This was completed successfully, on time and within budget by March 2006.

2.2 As part of this phase, a telephone numbering strategy for the Council was developed and implemented, based on the introduction of 0845 numbers. This strategy enabled easier access to our services, by providing a series of connected and easily recognisable numbers and, allowed the routing of calls more effectively, making it possible for callers to get through to the right person first time and, get their enquiry dealt with in the most efficient way. It also provided location independence, improved call routing functionality, disaster recovery and business continuity, online management and reporting of inbound services which, at that time, couldn’t be achieved with the traditional 0113 numbers.

2.3 The first of the 0845 ‘silver’ numbers were introduced for some of the services which had migrated to the Corporate Contact Centre and launched to coincide with the official opening in March 2006.

[…]

2.5 However, following the introduction of these 0845 ‘silver’ numbers, a small number of complaints were received from customers because some telecom providers charge more for making 0845 calls than local calls (although BT charge less) and some do not include 0845 numbers as part of any inclusive minutes or discount packages.

[…]

2.8 In July 2006, Ofcom announced it would be introducing new UK-wide 03 numbers to increase certainty, trust and confidence in the numbers that consumers use to call public services, voluntary organisations and companies who want a national presence. It said that the 03 number range would be for the exclusive use of public bodies and other not-for-profit organisations and, it was anticipated that 03 numbers would be available by the end of 2007.

2.9 In view of this pronouncement and, the adverse reaction of a very small minority of customers, it was decided to stop the introduction of any further 0845 numbers, including the ‘golden number’ to allow a fundamental review of the numbering strategy, when details of the 03 numbers and strategy were made clear by Ofcom.

2.10 Ofcom have now published details on how new UK-wide 03 numbers will be implemented and, the options for a new numbering strategy and ‘golden number’ are detailed in this report.

3.0 Numbering Strategy - Our Options

3.1 The following options are available for the development of a numbering strategy.

3.2 0113
Until recently, geographic numbers were not resilient, in that they were linked to a specific telephone exchange and, if that exchange failed, or the lines to which the number was delivered failed, then calls were lost. This meant that for normal 0113 numbers, disaster recovery and resilience across the Affiniti network was restricted to the Leeds exchange. If there was an emergency incident in the city centre which affected the Corporate Contact Centre, it would only have been possible to divert calls to an alternative location on the same telephone exchange.

However, technological developments now make it now possible to deploy specific 0113 geographic numbers on an Intelligent Network platform and provide location independence, subject to an additional cost to provide this flexibility.

[…]

5.0 Numbering Strategy – The Proposal

5.1 The above issues lead to a conclusion that the most appropriate option for our future numbering strategy should be the adoption of the 0113 prefix, particularly as these numbers are more resilient following recent technological developments and the fact that 0113 is already the widely recognised prefix for Leeds.

[…]

8.0 Legal and Resource Implications

8.1 For calls made by customers to the new Leeds City Council 0113 numbers, we will be charged 1.5p per minute. This charge includes the cost of deploying these specific geographic numbers on an Intelligent Network platform, to provide location independence and greater resilience. The Corporate Contact Centre handles approximately 1 million calls per year (excluding ALMO calls), at an average duration of 3 minutes per call. Therefore, the estimated cost to Contact Leeds of using 0113 numbers for the numbering strategy is £45,000 per year. This is higher than the current cost of using 0845 numbers, however, additional costs will be contained within existing budgetary provision. It is also substantially lower than the costs we would incur through providing a range of 0800 freephone numbers.

[…]

9.0 Recommendations

9.1 Members of Executive Board are recommended to adopt the 0113 prefix as Leeds City Council’s telephone numbering strategy.
>>

Interesting.  It seems that the penny is finally beginning to drop in some quarters.  However I still feel they could have got a cheaper deal than the one they have been given on their new 0113 IN arrangements had they had the assistance of forum IN expert Tanllan.

How long I wonder till we hear that Norwich City Council are reverting back to 01603 numbers.............