A FIFTH birthday means more work than ever for staff at Blackburn's malicious calls bureau.

Since it was set up in 1992 the centre, based at British Telecom's Jubilee Street offices, has witmnessed requests for help in dealing with unwanted callers shoot up by 73 per cent.

During the five years, the team has dealt with more than 160,000 cases, ranging from silent calls made by pranksters to ones of a more threatening and abusive nature.

The bureau has witnessed a steady rise in the number of calls received - from around 21,000 in 1992 to 37,000 in 1996/97.

Consequently, thousands of nuisance callers have been cautioned and hundreds successfully prosecuted.

The centre now deals with an average of 3,000 requests each month and connects more than 100 tracing devices to telephones each week.

Centre manager Ian Hall said: "Receiving malicious calls can be extremely traumatic but victims are often reassured by our ability to help them.

"We have a highly-trained team who not only give comfort and advice to victims, but also use the latest digital telecommunications technology to assist the police in tracking down the people who abuse the telephone by making these calls."

He added: "We take this problem very seriously and as well as working with the police to either caution or prosecute the offenders, we can also disconnect their telephone service.

"Although more people are coming to us for help, it doesn't mean the problem is growing at the same speed. It is rather that more people now know we are here to help."

In a regional breakdown of calls to the bureau between 1996 and 1997, Lancashire came out top with 11,000 calls - 1,000 more than Greater Manchester.

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