North Yorkshire 101 Calls Can Take Up to an Hour to Answer

Wednesday, 7 December 2022 06:00

By Matthew Pells

North Yorkshire Police also say some 999 calls have taken up to two minutes to answer.

The average amount of time it takes the police to answer a 999 call in the county is the second slowest in the country.

North Yorkshire Police says it is improving its call answer times but admits there is more to do.

Assistant Chief Constable Mike Walker says while over half of 999 calls are answered within 10 seconds, some take as long as 2 minutes.

Some calls to North Yorkshire Police's 101 line are taking up to an hour to answer.

The force says it is working on issues with its call handling and says it will be getting advice from neighbouring forces.

Assistant Chief Constable Mike Walker says the long wait times are not acceptable.

ACC Walker says the force has already made a number of changes to it's call handling operations with staff in the force control room now working across both the 999 and 101 service, Mike Walker says there is a balance to be struck.

The North Yorkshire Force handled 9,122 emergency 999 calls in October with an average answer time of 19 seconds.

In the same month the force received 11,499 calls to it's 101 service with an average answer time of 8 minutes 47 seconds.

The force says the average number of monthly calls it receives to it's 999 line has doubled in the last ten years.

Official data shows that in October the North Yorkshire Force answered 44.6% of 999 calls in less than ten seconds, this represents the worst performance of any force in England, 46.2% of calls were answered in between 10 and 60 seconds and 9.1% of calls took longer than a minute to answer.