West Sussex social services give out resident’s number as their own

VULNERABLE children’s personal details are being left on a Crawley man’s answering machine – after social services staff mistakenly gave out his number as their own.

Andy Robinson is being called “every day” by people wanting to discuss cases involving at-risk youngsters.

His number has been wrongly passed on by West Sussex County Council’s social services team on letters and e-mails.

Mr Robinson, of Tollgate Hill, Broadfield, said he has made several attempts to get the mistake amended, but nothing has been done.

“It is getting silly now, beyond a joke,” he added. “I just want the situation resolved.

“About six months to a year ago this all started and it is still going on now.

“You would think they would want to get it fixed, I am getting people ringing me up about child-protection cases.

“These people assume it is the right number and launch into telling me confidential information and I have to stop them, explain the situation and give them the correct number.

“It is not safe, they should be protecting these children.”

The social services team based in Crawley has a direct telephone number which only differs by one digit to Mr Robinson’s home number, which has led to the mistake.

He added: “I am a window cleaner and I use my home phone number for business.

“I have thought many times about changing my number to stop the hassle but it would affect my business.

“I have had the same number for the past 20 years, why should I change it?

“They should want to fix it, but they don’t. It is always me phoning them. They apologise and I was even promised an apology letter a few months ago, but I have never seen it.

“One guy said to me that my number could have gone out to 40,000 people. I just want it stopped.”

A West Sussex County Council spokesman apologised for the error. He said: “We are very sorry indeed that this has happened and for the inconvenience. We have now written to Mr Robinson.”