§ Mr. Tony BanksTo ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how many calls have been made to charterline since its inception; what has been the average daily call rate and the average cost per call; how many personnel work on charterline; and what has been the total cost to date of charterline, including promotion and all associated costs.
§ Mr. David DavisOver 5,530 calls have been made to charterline since its inception, an average of 25 calls a day.
403WIBM has nine trained staff available to answer charterline calls, who also perform a wide range of other tasks and answer other calls. Up to four of these are awaiting charterline and other calls at any one time.
The operational cost per call to date is £68. If call volumes were higher, significant economies of scale could be achieved. The operational costs of a pilot study are always relatively high. One of the purposes of the charterline pilot study is to assess the demand of the service and the volume of calls and costs that would be associated with a national service. The pilot study will ensure that, if charterline is rolled out, it is done on a high-quality and extremely cost-effective basis.
Total set-up costs amount to £1,251,000. These include initial research, project planning and management, system design, contractual advice and data collection, which are all one-off costs. Running costs to date amount to £1,037,679. These include paid advertising, research during the pilot study, set up and use of ACORN data—which categorise groups of households into one of 38 types, on the basis of such factors as the ages of the people living there, the size of their home, the type of work they do, their ethnic background and so on—operational costs, and operation of the charterline language service, which is available in Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.