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The research, produced by Brookmead Consulting, found that silent calls cause 53 per cent of the population either unacceptable inconvenience or anxiety. On average people receive about six silent calls a month, rising to 7.3 for the over-65s who often spend more time at home.

The situation needs tackling and the DMA has responded with changes to its Direct Marketing Code of Practice, overseen by the Contact Centre Council.

The most important changes concern caller line identification (CLI).

This enables the person being called to identify the company contacting them, either by dialling 1471 and calling the company back or by viewing the caller's number on the display unit on their phone.

At the moment the Code only stipulates that companies using automated dialling equipment should provide CLI, however this is being extended to all call centres.

"It is difficult to argue that telemarketers should be allowed to hide their identity even if they do not use a dialler," says Neil Matthews, compliance manager at the DMA, adding that much of the consumer anxiety around nuisance calls is the anonymity of the caller.

Another Code change will see consumers suffer no cost when they make a CLI call. Previously the Code stated that CLI returned calls should not exceed the national call rate but this is changing to make such calls free in business-to-consumer campaigns.

The final significant change requires users of automated dialling equipment to provide more robust statistics of their activity at CDR (call data record) level. Previously, dialler statistics had to include a daily summary of the number of calls attempted, answered, passed to a live operator and abandoned by dialling equipment. Now, however, this information is being enhanced with CDR data which details each individual call made.

This, says Matthews, will make complaint investigation much easier.

"From a compliance point of view, we can request this information from our members at any time," he says. "By making the summary reports more hefty, we will have a depth of information to follow up complaints."

A summary of the Code changes can be found at www.dma.org.uk.