§ Brian CotterTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many calls have been received by the Business Links national call centres since April 2001; and what proportion of these were re-directed to each of the local business link providers. [46191]
§ Nigel GriffithsThe Business Link National Contact Centre (BLNCC) has received 52,450 calls between 2 April 2001 and 17 March 2002. Of these calls, 11,560 were referred to Business Link operators, while 26,187 calls were fulfilled by the BLNCC (for example arranging mailing of small business literature). The remaining calls were fulfilled by referral to other sources of expertise (such as Farm Business Advisory Service or the Small Business Service equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). A full breakdown of the number of calls passed on to the local Business Link operators is as follows: 705W
Local business link provider Number of calls Bedfordshire 105 Birmingham 193 Black Country 180 Cambridgeshire 191 Cheshire and Warrington 206 County Durham 114 Coventry and Warwickshire 142 Cumbria 810 Derbyshire 167 Devon and Cornwall 556 East Lancashire 156 Essex 268 Gloucestershire 162 Greater Manchester and Wigan 349 Hereford and Worcester 190 Hertfordshire 184 Humberside 90 Kent 218 Leicestershire 210 Lincolnshire 168 London 2,742 Merseyside 144 Milton Keynes, Oxford and Berkshire 295 North and West Lancashire 211 Norfolk 132 North Manchester Chambers Business Services Ltd. 119 North Yorkshire 218 Northamptonshire 94 Northumberland 124 Nottinghamshire 152 Shropshire 119 Somerset 136 South Yorkshire 143 Staffordshire 140 Suffolk 140 Surrey 236 Sussex 250 Tees Valley 65 Tyne and Wear 112 West 147 Wessex (formally Hampshire, Dorset and IOW) 544 West Yorkshire 335 Wiltshire, Swindon and Berkshire 303