Martin Underwood wrote:
"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...

"Clive Page" wrote in message
...

One notes with surprise that an extraordinary number of
shop-fronts and commercial vehicles appear to have been
re-painted in the brief period during which the area codes were
0207 and 0208, and not to have been re-painted afterwards. What
a pity that nobody told them to wait for the second number change
of the pair. :-)

I would hardly say 'with surprise', Clive. The whole exercise was
so spectacularly mismanaged and the misinformation or
disinformation that was received by the general public at large
made such a shambles a foregone conclusion. If I had been the
owner of a property or vehicle that had been erroneously numbered
as a result of this mismanagement then I would have been making a
considerable amount of noise about who would be compensating me
for correcting the situation!

I'm usually fairly clued-up about technical changes like this, but
I hadn't appreciated that there was an interim time when 0208 xxx
yyyy and xxx yyyy were valid: I thought they went straight from
0171 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx yyyy. What a shame the Oftel made such a
dog's breakfast of the changes in London and didn't have the
foresight to go straight from 01 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx yyyy in one
go :-(

See my other post; I think Clive is mistaken. In any case, they
couldn't go straight from 01 to 020 7 because 0207 was already the code
for Consett, Durham (now 01207). Similarly, 0208 was Bodmin, Cornwall.

I've seen quite a few vehicles which even to this day bear phone
numbers such as 01532 xxxxxx or 01734 xxxxxx, having blindly
applied the "insert a 1" rule to codes that changed completely - eg
to 0113 or 0118.

I don't know about Leeds, but Reading changed to 01734 in 1995
(phONEday). The new code of 0118 was introduced in 1996, in parallel
with 01734 which was withdrawn in 1998.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)