STAFF at a women's fashion shop in the Outlet Village have been receiving calls for Swindon's Tax Office.

Employees at the Autonomy shop in the West Mall of the Outlet Village have been receiving around 15 calls a day intended for the cash office.

Their telephone number is (01793) 490241, a number used by Swindon Tax Office until 1998.

The Autonomy shop opened 18 months ago and has received small numbers of calls ever since.

But in recent weeks the calls have been increasing in number. About 30 were received on Thursday and 13 had been received by late morning on Friday.

Last month the Evening Advertiser reported a similar mix-up at a chiropractic clinic, which has been bombarded by calls intended for the Inland Revenue.

The Ridgeway Chiropractic Clinic in Wroughton has received scores of calls from people ringing the Inland Revenue's Tax Credit help line for advice concerning the Government's new tax credits.

It happened because of a similarity between the two numbers only one digit is different.

Autonomy sales assistant Diane Thompson, 41, who has worked there since it opened, said: "We have been getting small numbers of calls for months but recently they have been getting worse and worse and some are become quite abusive.

"I don't think they realise they are through to a clothes shop to be honest.

"They are so happy they have finally got through to someone that they fail to hear the greeting and they start asking questions about whether their husbands or daughters should be paying."

Diane added, that the problem wasn't affecting the business, but said: "When it gets busy and there's only three of us here and one is constantly on the phone, it is difficult. The thing is you explain that they have got the wrong number "

The shop contacted Swindon Tax Office who said hundreds of forms had been sent out with the old phone number wrongly stated.

They added that the shop should expect many more calls.

Jason Mann, regional spokesman for BT, said that there had been a reasonable amount of time between the number being withdrawn from use by the Tax Office and its re-introduction for use by the shop.

He added: "We have looked into this and we can confirm that the telephone number formerly used by the tax office has been out of use for at least two years.

People are giving up telephone numbers all the time so it is important that we can reissue them.

"Looking through our records, we appear not to have received any complaints from Autonomy."

Maddy Fuller, spokeswoman for the Inland Revenue, said it had been a case of human error and apologised on behalf of the agency.

She said: "This problem is a genuine case of human error. The mistake was soon realised after the staff at Autonomy called the Tax Office.

"Although we are not sure how many letters are carrying the incorrect phone numbers, we believe only a small batch was sent before the mistake was found. We apologise for any problems this might have caused for staff at the shop."

The correct number for Swindon's Tax Office is 01793 602200.