Householders are still being plagued with high levels of nuisance phone calls and texts a year after a national taskforce demanded tough action to stamp out the problem.
Consumer group Which? said the latest research for its Calling Time campaign showed unwanted calls remained a major issue for consumers, with three quarters of those with a landline receiving unwanted calls in the space of a month. Nuisance calls to mobile phones have also soared with seven in 10 people reporting they had received at least one nuisance call to their mobile compared with more than half in 2013.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently announced its latest crackdown against such calls and texts, issuing written warnings to more than 1,000 companies it believes are buying and selling lists of names and numbers. It has issued fines totalling £895,000 in the past four months and has a further £1m in the pipeline.
Last week a company that bombarded households with millions of nuisance calls about hearing loss claims was fined £850,000 by a separate regulator. The National Advice Clinic, based in Lancashire, made almost 6m calls between October 2014 and April 2015 about noise-induced hearing loss claims, the Claims Management Regulator said. Many calls went to households registered with the opt-out Telephone Preference Service.
A year ago the nuisance calls and texts taskforce, led by Which? and its executive director Richard Lloyd, called for action from businesses, industry bodies, regulators and the government. It is now urging the government to give the ICO more powers to hold board level executives to account.
“Despite some good progress, we are still seeing high levels of unwanted calls and texts so more needs to be done to put an end to this everyday menace once and for all,” Lloyd said.
“The government, regulators and business need to continue to work together to tackle this problem, with further action to cut nuisance calls off at source and make senior executives accountable if their company is caught flouting the rules.”
He welcomed the fact that the energy company SSE has become the first major company to sign up to all aspects of the campaign, putting a stop to cold calling in 2013 and recently announcing that a senior director will be held responsible if the company is found making nuisance calls. But the majority of companies have not announced or committed to making nuisance calls a board level issue
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