News

The National Care Standards Commission has transferred all its helpdesk calls to a call centre after it found it was unable to cope with the volume of telephone enquiries in-house.

The new professional call centre in Selkirk, Scottish Borders, received more than 900 telephone calls on its first day of operation last Tuesday.

The original in-house facility consisted of just four operators, as this was all the room size permitted, and quickly proved unable to cope with the hundreds of calls it was receiving each day.

"Our call centre was not intended to take the level of calls coming in," an NCSC spokesperson said.

The commission has been running an apology about its telephone enquiry problems on its website.

The commission is also receiving an enormous amount of mail and is recruiting more staff to deal with it. A number of positions, including administration roles, are still vacant.

"The recruitment process is ongoing and we need to get it moving very quickly," added the spokesperson.

- Helpdesk number - 0191 233 3556. Web site www.doh.gov.uk/ncsc/