I don't know of any company in the UK that would ever answer such a question, maybe a small shop that hasn't learnt better yet. Companies will provide references that always just say "this person has worked here for X years", no one would ever say anything either positive or negative.

In the US at the corporate level, this would be extremely unusual.

Not to mention how is it even useful? It's the easiest thing in the world to fake by passing along the phone number of a friend claiming to be a co-worker and full of effusive praise for you. It's not like most companies list the phone numbers of their employees somewhere publicly that you could verify.

Decades ago when I was a bartender, it was common practice for your "reference" to be a buddy who would pretend to be the manager at your last restaurant.