0845 and 0870 phone lines: Government departments warned


Simple give them a deadline of two weeks.

While a deadline of 2 weeks would be good I suspect that some of these numbers are provided by third parties who have contracts with the government departments so there may be penalty clauses if the contract is terminated early.
In addition, these numbers presumably provide a revenue stream of some sort to the departments using them so I'm not expecting to see a stampede to swap the numbers for free/low cost ones in the short term.

Still, the sooner these numbers are replaced the better.

If the contracts are too restrictive then they should sue the contractor for an unfair contract.

The revenue stream is probably why they will be slow to remove them, but the government could make it that after the deadline everyone can claim the cost of the calls back in the small claims court. If you can get your money back and sting them with bailiffs it will get them to change fast.