AN ENERGY-saving Southampton call centre has been fined after staff made unsolicited marketing calls to people with blacklisted numbers.

Home Logic UK, based in Shirley Road, Shirley, admitted making nearly 1.5 million unprompted phone calls promoting its service.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigated the firm and found 133 people had made complaints about receiving unwanted calls, despite being on TPS - a free service that is meant to stop businesses contacting people who have asked not to be.

Upon its findings, ICO slapped the organisation with a £50,000 fine and warned other firms it would “come down hard on them if they don’t respect the public’s right to privacy”.

Home Logic UK, which according to its website claims to “bring energy saving solutions to the homes of the UK”, said that it screened the numbers it had received from third-party providers against the TPS.

However the system the home energy saving provider used was unavailable for 90-days from April 2015 and March 2016.

On those days, the business continued to make the calls without using an alternative screening to see if the numbers had been blacklisted.

ICO head of enforcement Steve Eckersley, inset, said: “Organisations have no excuse – they know that calling people on the TPS register is against the law.

“We continue to see companies suffering the financial and reputational consequences of being caught making nuisance calls, which could have been prevented if they had invested in a TPS licence and made proper use of it. It is baffling that some firms continue to take this business risk.”

Justin Perry, who runs Home Logic UK, said the firm had trusted the third party data it had received.

He said: “This was an honest mistake and regrettably we found out this was not sufficient. Our due diligence was unfortunately lacking in this instance during that period.

“We sincerely apologise to the people affected and reassure the public that our new dialler system is fully compliant and that Home Logic will continue to work with the ICO and the DMA to continually improve our practices.”

Royston Smith, MP for Southampton Itchen, said: “These companies can be massively intrusive and trouble to some people, particularly the old and vulnerable. The companies who make these calls should respect their wishes of people who just don’t want to be contacted by them.”