Our emergency database
Dialling 999 or 112 is never a nice experience, set up on 30th June 1937, it was the first emergency services number anywhere in the world and it’s still where we turn to when we need help in an emergency, handling just under 2 million calls a year.
We hope you never need to call the emergency services, but if you do, it’s reassuring to know you’ll have prompt, professional help within minutes. For this to happen, finding your location is of the highest importance. For calls made by mobile phones, technology is evolving and improvements to emergency caller location information (ECLI) is growing.
However, for landlines, the responsibility falls to Communication Providers (CPs) like TalkTalk, to ensure your landline location details are kept accurate and up to date. To do this, we’re constantly cross-referencing our customer location information with that provided by official sources like Royal Mail, Ordnance Survey and BT (the company responsible for routing 999 calls effectively). Sometimes, we find details don’t match up and that’s when we need to take immediate action to correct this.
What's the Emergency Database?
The Emergency Database provides the emergency services with accurate location information in the event that a call to them becomes disconnected or the individual cannot tell the operator their address. The accuracy of the information is key to providing prompt, potentially life-saving, attendance from any of the emergency services.
Why is the information wrong?
Several things can cause a miss-match and whilst the following is by no means a complete list as there are many reasons why it can happen here are some common reasons:
- Properties may become split into multiple occupancy dwellings
- Properties may have converted to/from a business address
- The business has changed its name
- Royal Mail have amended postcodes in your area
- A simple formatting issue, example your address is “Flat 2, 24 The Street” and we only have “24 The Street”
How this impacts you
More often than not, it won't impact you as the vast majority of customers’ details are correct. However, on the occasion that we find a miss-match, we'll reach out to you via email or by writing to you and asking you to call our dedicated team who’ll resolve the discrepancy immediately. If you don’t contact us, we may attempt to call you.
The important thing is we resolve it as soon as possible and we treat this issue with high importance; though this sounds dramatic, it could be the difference between the emergency services getting to you in time.
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