How we check our information: why we don’t give scores

The type of a number, the area a landline code covers, and the phone company a block of numbers was given to all come from Ofcom’s numbering data (opens in a new tab). Ofcom aims to publish new files every Wednesday. We download them automatically every Thursday, usually the day after Ofcom publishes, and update the site when anything has changed. If a download fails our checks, the site keeps the previous set until we have fixed it. Each page shows the date of the Ofcom files it uses.

Ofcom allocates phone numbers to communications providers in blocks. The provider shown is the one Ofcom allocated this block to. It is not the person or business that called you, and the number may since have moved to a different network, because people can usually keep their number when they switch provider. Ofcom does not hold information about individual numbers.

Phone number ranges come from Ofcom’s “Download numbering data” files, which are Ofcom copyright and reused under Ofcom’s re-use terms.

When a bank, council, government department or company publishes a phone number, we record the page it is on, a short quote from that page and the date we read it. Each month an automatic check reloads every source page it can reach and confirms the number and our quote are still there; the date we show moves on only when they are. Some organisations’ websites block automated checks, so we check those pages by hand. If a number disappears from its page, we look into it before changing or removing the listing. We say “listed by”, never “this call was from”, because scammers can copy a real number.

Anyone can suggest an official number by sending the number and the page on the organisation’s own website where it is published. We open that page and find the number on it before we add anything, in the same way as above. Nothing is published from a suggestion on its own, and we do not use numbers from forums, directories or other lookup sites.

Contact numbers for GP practices, pharmacies, NHS trusts and schools come from these public registers:

We download these registers again each month, along with the GOV.UK, police.uk and court data, and show the date of each download with the listings.

Organisation listings contain public sector information from NHS England (Organisation Data Service), the Department for Education (Get Information about Schools), the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and the Welsh Government, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Read the Open Government Licence (opens in a new tab).

Phone numbers for government departments, police forces and courts come from published contact data: GOV.UK organisation contact pages, HMRC’s contact finder on GOV.UK, police.uk, and HM Courts & Tribunals Service’s Find a Court or Tribunal. All of it is published under the Open Government Licence. You can browse it by government department, police force or court and tribunal.

Public sector listings contain public sector information from GOV.UK (including HM Revenue & Customs contact pages and HM Courts & Tribunals Service’s Find a Court or Tribunal) and from police.uk, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Read the Open Government Licence (opens in a new tab).

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