FOI release

Departmental pagers

Published 19 September 2013

© Crown copyright 2013

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/department-pagers/departmental-pagers

  • Date requested: 12 February 2013
  • Publish date: 7 March 2013

Request

  1. How many pager numbers does your department use? Please state how many are for out-of-hours press numbers.
  2. How much money has your department spent on pager services in each of the past three financial years, ie 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12? If possible, please separate this into the purchase and maintenance of pagers, the contracts to run them, and the cost of paying for call centres to take the pager calls.
  3. How many calls have your department’s pagers received in each of the past 3 financial years, ie 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12? If possible, please split this into out-of-hours press calls and others.
  4. Please state if your figures include those for arm’s length agencies under your department.

Release

Following a search of the department’s paper and electronic records, I have established that some of the information you requested is not held by this Department. I have set out below the information which is available in relation to each of your points.

  1. We currently use 21 pagers and all are used to help provide the media with an out-of-hours press service every day of the year.
  2. The costs below are from January to December for each calendar year:
  • 2009 – Total Spend £1,551.46
  • 2010 – Total Spend £1,767.81
  • 2011 – Total Spend £1,016.49
  • 2012 – Total Spend £838.60 usage and £678.43 one-off maintenance and purchase charges. We do not hold data broken down by financial year, nor with costs separated out as you requested – other than for data relating to 2012.

3. We received 1474 calls between 19 February 2012 and 19 February 2013. This only covers media queries received via the pager service. We do not hold data relating to other calls made in the last 3 financial years.

4. We do not hold central records for our arm’s length bodies or executive agencies, so these figures relate to the Department for Education only.

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