The time it takes North Yorkshire Police to answer 999 calls is unacceptable, according to the county's Police and Crime Commissioner.
Commissioner Zoe Metcalfe says a significant sum of money is now being invested in the force control room to improve call answer times.
The commissioner says changes to the force's "initial Investigation Team" are also having an effect on how quickly the public get a response to non-emergency incidents.
An extra one point nine Million pounds a year has been added to the North Yorkshire Police budget to improve the force's call answer times.
Commissioner Zoe Metcalfe says the money will enable more staffing for the force control room, the commissioner says she is confident the force can make improvements.
The Police Commissioner's office say the extra £1.9m per year will enable the force to:
- Fund 36 additional communications officers, 12 additional dispatchers, 6 established trainers and 2 additional police inspectors.
- Streamline the after-call administration activities by reviewing call handling processes to ensure that staff spend as little time as possible on after-call work, freeing them up for the next incoming call
- Allow for detailed work to understand and deliver process efficiencies by reviewing all processes within the customer contact function to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.
- Provide new ICT technologies with Implementation of additional tools to help manage the workforce, ensuring that resource meets demand as well as introducing an element of automation when processing an incident, freeing up the communications officers to enable them to take further calls.
- Explore and develop alternative ways to advance people and technology to meet the needs of the public offering a variety of channels
The demand on police control rooms has been steadily increasing across the country with a 16% increase in calls nationwide last year.
The commissioner's office say:
"North Yorkshire Police generally deal with over 10,000 emergency (999) calls a month. In additional to this, in October alone, 2022 the Force received over 18,000 non-emergency (101) calls.
The Force also receives around 10,000 ‘hold for the operator’ calls each month which are taken by police station front counter staff.
Adding to incoming calls, the FCR make approximately 12,000 – 13,000 outgoing calls each month. These include calls to other services during live incidents (such as the ambulance and fire and rescue services).
Other outgoing calls also include attempts to ‘call back’ individuals when the Force has received 999 calls which have then been hung up.
During a 6-month period, the Force dealt with 10,000 ‘pocket calls’ where members of the public had accidentally called the police on emergency 999."
The commissioner says the improvement programme will not only see more staff recruited to the control room but will also see a review of the "Initial Investigation Team" , they take 30-50% of non-emergency incidents and place them into an appointment system, which means that within 3 days a member of the public will have received contact from the police (for non-emergency cases only).
The team has reduced demand on the front line, releasing officers to get to higher grade incidents quickly. There is a customer satisfaction survey for people who receive this service and 94% report as being ‘very pleased’ with their experience.
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