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25
May 2023
A third of callers give up on police 101 calls in North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire’s police commissioner has criticised the force after new figures today revealed more than a third of 101 calls were abandoned.
Statistics for April showed 16,939 non-emergency calls were made to North Yorkshire Police.
Of that number, the average answer time was five minutes and 27 seconds.
The force has a target to answer 90% of calls within 120 seconds. Last month, 60% were picked up in time and 34% were abandoned.
At a North Yorkshire Police online public meeting today, Zoe Metcalfe, the Conservative police, fire and crime commissioner, said:
The meeting can be viewed here.
The criticism comes after the commissioner awarded the force control room £1.8 million a year to improve response times.
Figures for 101 calls in April. Data: NYP.
The money was earmarked to fund the appointment of 36 additional communications officers, 12 additional dispatchers, six established trainers and two additional police inspectors.
Elliot Foskett, assistant chief constable at the force, said he was optimistic the performance would start to improve.
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Meanwhile, Mr Foskett pointed to “massive improvements” in the force’s 999 response times.
The force control room answered 76% of calls over the last three months on time.
The figure is in stark contrast to November 2022, when just 44% of 999 calls were answered within that time frame.
However, it is still short of the police national target to answer 90% of calls in under 10 seconds.
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