Although the Government has made it illegal for doctors' surgeries to have 0844 telephone numbers, mine still has one.

I am sure that a lot of other surgeries in the area have failed to comply with this change in the law, claiming that they need to wait until their contract runs out.  In the meantime, we have to pay a premium rate to make appointments while the surgeries themselves get paid for us doing so.

It is scandalous and I would encourage as many people as possible to put pressure on surgeries to immediately revert to land-line numbers. 

A lot of people have ordinary numbers included free in their phone package from which 0844 numbers are excluded - the same applies to mobile phones, with many providers piling on the charges for using these numbers.

Brian Pascall
West Street
Epsom