I hope I am posting this in the correct place but I need some help with a reply.   In addition to my FOIA request to ECC, I also made a complaint via their CEO, Cust Services Manager (Jane Hallett) and the council leader, Lord Hanningfield and my local cllr - the last 2 refuse to make any proper reply and I just receive a rude brush off every time I make contact - odd as they SHOULD need my vote!   I first received the usual standard nonsense to which I replied and have now received a further response which is more detailed.  However, I feel that there are still arguments which could be raised and this may be worthwhile as they have moved a very small amount between letters 1 & 2.  I feel I lack the expertise to make the best possible reply (and I am a bit confused with all the information on the site, particularly where it becomes more technical).  Is there a way I can scan my letter onto the site to avoid having to re-type what is a fairly lengthy document ( I am not very technical)?   One particular point, they still say "The cost of a call to a 0845 nymber is charged at the local rate from anywhere in the UK if called from a BT line."   I am sure I have seen something on the site but cannot be certain and I don't want to get it wrong.   They also refused my challenge to give me details of any benefit to ME from the use of 0845, but I expected that.  I had mentioned COI guidelines, quoting bits, they focus on 3.53 while choosing to ignote 3.50 & 3.51!

Of course, if telecoms providers were compelled to include 087x/084x nos in their inclusive packages, that would help a lot of people.

Any advice would be appreciated.   Please keep up the good work.
Barbara

I was complaining about their change to 0845 nos without providing geog equivalents (although these can be found by trawling their website, I have a real thing that they should be provided with equal prominence to any NGN), their failure to provide any cost guide on their Essex Matters publication which is delivered to all Essex residents, the fact that I am certain (although this will be confirmed by FOIA response) that they didn't consider the issue of 0845 increasing the costs of many Essex residents etc - the usual sort of complaint we all have with the use of NGNs.  If I could work out how to post their reply on thie website, it might help.

Have now received a response to my FOIA request which I think is quite helpful and very interesting.   I am going to retype the letter here, minus the opening and ending.

"1) Enclosed is extract from the Minutes of the Corporate Management Group meeting held on 16th March 2005, plus supporting paper.
2) No briefings were provided to Councillors in relation to the proposal to move to 0845 numbers and this was not discussed specifically at any Councillor meeting.   However, enclosed is a copy of an email sent in resopnse to a query from the Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources about the costs of moving to 0845 numbers.   This issue was not progressed further.   
3) PLease find enclosed a copy of a) Research Study conducting [?ed] by MORI on behalf of Essex County Council, written in Sept 2003; b) an extract from the Access to Services Position Statement Final 17/01/2003 p9-15; c) our Access to Services POsition Statement Feb 2003, please refer specifically to p14-19 regarding telephone contact with the Council.
4) No votes were taken by Councillors on this issue and the proposal to move to 0845 numbers was not discussed at any member meetings.
5) Please find enclosed a list of numbers you would need as a Governor of an Essex School.  [NB all geographical]
In addition to the numbers on this list, please call Jo Lang on 01245 436064 for Governor Training and GOvernor Development.   All enquiries relating to Higher Education Funding should be directed to the details listed under Student & Pupil Financial Support.
The Geographical number for your local Highways Office is 01279 642500.
The Geographical number for Trading Standards (Business Enquiries) is 01206 222307.
Trading Standards for consumers is delivered for Essex by Consumer Direct.  Their number is 0845 404 0506.   The geographical number for this is 01438 737460 as this service is based in Hertfordshire and is not managed by Essex County Council.[This, in itself I find disgraceful]
You may reuse all of this information free of charge in any format or medium.   You must reuse it accurately and not in a misleading context."
Lend ends with writer saying she is leaving ECC on 24/2/06 and usual re if not satisfied.
email from officer to Member CC d 8/3/05
"David [another CC] would like to speak to you about the charges for the 0845 numbers that will be used in the Contact Centre.   I have spoken to Jane Hallett, who tells me we will "break even" on calls being received from within Essex as they are charged locally to us and we in turn charge local rates.   However, we only charge local rates for calls originating outside Essex and therefore effectively subsidise these calls as they are charged to us at national rate.   Jane estimates (very generously apparently) that total call costs to ECC, including line rental will be around £20,000 per year.   Hope that makes sense!
David thinks there is an opportunity to generate income on these numbers, to at least break even on call costs, if not make a profit.   He asked me to drop you an email and will catch up with you at some point soon."

Apols for any typos in these docs.

Very interesting, the only member involvement was to see if the CC could make money out of its residents!!!  I will post the geog nos I received in the next few days.   I find this response very interesting in that it is in total contrast to the Police Authority replies and that from Norfolk CC.  Do they actually want to get out of NGNs but don't know how?   This also explains why members refuse to respond.   I am sure this will interest the forum member who is also a district cllr (is it Non-Geographical Man - I have forgotten, sorry).

~ Edited by Dave: Highlighting added

Barbara wrote on Feb 24^th, 2006 at 12:07pm:


Barbara,

I think the rather more helpful attitude by the County Council reflects the fact that whatever their faults may be County Councils are a more open and accountable form of organisation than the Police.  If Council staff get a question about their administrative decisions (especially under FOI) they are likely to try to be as helpful as possible within reason.  By contrast in my experience most of the Police force has an attitude of "we know better" and "you are a deviant trying to buck the system" to any attempt by the public to query or question the way that they operate.  It also seems that many Police FOI officers have received active training in how to circumvent COI requests by using the various possible exemptions.  Whereas  the Essex FOI officer sounds like they are personally sympathetic to stopping the misuse of these numbers by councils.  Note they indicated they were about to leave the County Council which usually makes staff much more inclined to act in the way they personally feel is right.

As a district councillor I can honestly say that most of the time many of the Councillors haven't a clue about the detail of many of the decisions taken by their own organisation and that they only get to sign off the big strategic top level decisions on many matters and that far too much power is left in the hands of officers to decide what is considered to be mere detail on many matters.  And unfortunately the type of telephone number used is considered a matter of detail that can be delegated to their IT manager in many councils.  That is what had happened at my council where 0845 numbers had just started to be used (although only for a credit card payment line and the new recycling waste collection scheme rather than the main switchboard). 

I am happy to report that as an organisation with about 300 permanent staff that we do not have a contact centre and matters are handled directly with the public by staff in each department on a normal geographic number.  I hope that we will never have a central customer service contact centre or 084/7 numbers for such activities if I have anything to do with it, although unfortunately the government currently seems to be planning to try to get rid of us and replace us with a vast unitary councils crossing the West Sussex and Surrey County Council boundaries by 2009 - no doubt that would handle all customer enquiries through a vast faceless contact centre - quite possibly based in India if current trends are anything to go by.

Sadly too many of my fellow district councillors like to bask in a sort of worthy civic glory but do not often question the detail of business decisions put in front of them.  For instance I have just tried to challenge an officer led plan to hike our car park charges by 14% to 30% on the alleged basis that this is preferable to increasing our element of the Council Tax by 0.5% (so only 0.05% on the actual Council Tax people pay) due to government funding cuts.  But only two of my other fellow councillors on the ruling group wanted to think about this and the rest just went along with their heads in the sand saying what the officers had recommended was right and not wanting to know about killing off our town centres and pushing everyone to use out to Tesco and Bluewater etc in the long run.

You may be interested in Ofcom's just launched consultation on a new National Telephone Number Plan.  This suggests a new class of NGNs beginning 03 that will be charged at geographic rates and included in inclusive calling plans.  But 084/7 numbers will be able to continue without proper price disclosure that they are premium rate so what incentive will there be to move?

See www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/numberingreview/numberingplan/?a=87101 and www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/numberingreview/ and

Barbara wrote on Feb 24^th, 2006 at 2:14pm:


My district council in Surrey (the one with a river valley named after those annoying little creatures who insist on burrowing under your lawn and throwing up mounds of earth) has been no overall control for all but one of its nearly 32 years of existence.  This seems to lead to a culture where officers are very strongly in control of many decision processes because they often have to broker a compromise between the divided opinions of the different parties.  It is also to do with the attitude taken by our current Chief Executive of some 14 years standing.

The 0845 numbers that were introduced were done so entirely by our IT manager without any decision at a committee requesting him to move to using these numbers.  But of course he is normally in charge of all telecoms matters day to day and so thought he also had the decision making power here.  His excuse for using 0845 numbers for the enquiry team for the trial recycling scheme was that he didn't have budgetary authority to offer more real geographic phone lines with an 01 phone number and that he could acquire these 0845 numbers for nothing during the duration of the trial at zero cost to the council (never mind that it was not zero cost to those having to call the numbers).  He then allowed the 0845 numbers to carry on when the service rolled out from being a trial to being the full service.  A committee chairman responsible for Environment would have seen the leaflet with an 0845 number on before it went out but didn't query it.

So the only way round it was for me to put down a motion to the full council highlighting the disadvantages of these numbers and insisting that we did not use them in future.  In the beginning I was thought to be a little cranky or obsessive on the matter but after referral and discussion at our Environment Committee the motion saying we should  not use them in future was passed unanimously at the Environment Committee and at full Council.  As with so much of this whole issue the difficulty at the outset is always communicating to people what the real problem is.

It is good to have at least one female member of this forum who feels as passionately on this subject as the other mainly male forum regulars.  I was beginning to think that opposition to 0870 numbers was an exclusively male phenomenon, a bit like trainspotting and plane spotting!

I assume your husband is a senior officer though on an Essex district council then and not down here in southern Surrey?  When I hear of the culture of other councils where one party is in overall control and has been for many years I am always amazed at how different it all sounds with the councillors leading most of the important projects at a fairly detailed level.  I recently also tried to get involved in the selection of a new audio system, tv monitors, electronic voting etc for our Council Chamber but by the time members were involved the officers had already decided the equipment spec they wanted and the only control left was over which supplier we used to install the equipment.  No councillor was allowed to be involved during the installation works and the result is hideous and unsightly large black monitors on long poles in front of the faces of the Chairman and council staff on the rostrum that they sit on in the Council chamber.  The new visualiser device is also hopeless as it requires the lights to be dimmed to see it.  We should have used a large widescreen plasma display for this job.  Once again it was a case of our IT manager wanting him and his staff to be able to do it their  way and not wanting to let the councillors interfere.  And believe me I did try to get involved!

Dave wrote on Feb 24^th, 2006 at 3:10pm:


Or they simply think of it as spending time worrying about something that only costs a few pence a minute and are unable to perceive that a typical housewife or homeworker could easily pay up to £200 a year extra in phone call costs if they did not actively avoid calling these 084/7 numbers.

I seem to have the same problem with my councillor colleagues who suggest it is better raising parking prices another 20p an hour than increasing the council tax yet further.  They seem unable to work out that the extra cost of not raising the car park rates on the Council Tax Bill is less than a pound per council tax payer but that increasing the car park charges costs those working in or shopping in town centres between another £20 and £100 a year - and that's just this year's little increase in the car park charges.

mc661 wrote on Feb 25^th, 2006 at 11:55pm:


It was me that made the comments about them getting paid by the amount they write (there are 158 pages in this consultation even though it can be summarised in to just the one A4 summary page of new number range designations) and also me that suggested that they should have an easy to use web form for people to send in any comments without all the rigmarole with the cover sheet and the attachment.

I just imagined people who only wanted to drop a few lines filling out one form with any comments they might have and never suggested that they have far more questions than they ever used to (only previously asked up to about 15 questions).  I can only suggest that they didn't like the amount of independent freeminded thought they were getting from some respondents (such as your truly) and so have tried to head off these inconvenient views by asking more questions that spin the responses in the right direction.

Luckily you can bypass their endless 61 question boxes by sending an email the old fashioned way with a Word attachment and Cover Sheet to NumberingReview@ofcom.org.uk  Imagine if you filled out all 61 boxes and then there was a problem when you pressed Submit and all your comments were lost (of course this may in fact be what Ofcom is counting on so as to reduce the number of trouble makers who respond)/  Anyone else with this many questions in a consultation would let you submit the answers to 5 or 6 questions at a time so there is no danger of the whole lot being electronically vaporised in one hit.

Another issue seems to be how will they actually publish the responses of the people who answer the 61 question boxes on the Responses to the Consultation section?

Trust Ofcom to as ever be lousy at Communication.