General guidance concerning the issues surrounding the recording of telephone calls

"Your call may be recorded for training and quality control purposes…." Words familiar to any of us who have telephoned a call centre in recent years. But, when time is money, why are our banks and electricity suppliers so keen to share this fact with us?

The advent of affordable call recording technology has undoubtedly made the routine recording and storage of telephone calls a viable proposition for many more businesses. The advantages are obvious – a record of what was said to whom and when, the ability to monitor staff etc. However, the downside is that for any business wishing to stay on the right side of the law there is a raft of legislation to be complied with.

• In the UK, there are four main sources of regulation:
• The Data Protection Act 1998;
• The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000;
• The Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000; and
• The Human Rights Act 1998.

Not all of this legislation was enacted specifically to deal with the recording of telephone calls. The Data Protection Act for example, makes it a criminal offence for any business which holds personal information about the living (which could be something as simple as a list of the names and addresses of employees) to have failed to register with the Information Commission, the body responsible for enforcing Data Protection and Freedom of Information regulation in the UK.

Other legislation is specifically targeted at the recording of telephone calls. Whilst readers are unlikely to find themselves in the situation that Sir Ian Blair, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police did in March last year, when he came under fire for having recorded calls with the Attorney General about counter terrorism without telling him first (arguably a breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) readers should prepare themselves for dealing with the irate customer who, in response to a recording being produced proving their complaint wrong, decides to argue that the recording should never have been made in the first place.

Whilst a detailed discussion of how this legislation applies to every different type of business recording calls is beyond the scope of this article, readers should always remember that the overriding purpose of much of the legislation is to ensure transparency and fairness. With callers, this includes taking "all reasonable measures" to inform them that their calls will be recorded. Many businesses take the decision that the best way to comply with this requirement is to play a recorded message before allowing callers to converse with a human being. However, it should be noted that this itself is not an explicit legal requirement under the legislation and so, for businesses able to demonstrate a legitimate reason for not using an automated message (for example, where it is important for callers to be connected to an operator as quickly as possible) there may be other options available to ensure compliance with the "reasonable measures" requirement which do not involve playing the ubiquitous announcement referred to at the start of this article.

Chris Berry
Business Development
Liquid Voice

Paul Jinks
Senior Technology law Specialist
International Law Firm - Hammonds

This article is intended to provide general guidance concerning the issues surrounding the recording of telephone calls and should not be interpreted as legal advice with application to a specific set of facts.