People are waiting for up to an hour for a 101 call to be answered, a senior North Yorkshire Police officer has said.

Mike Walker, assistant chief constable at the force, told a North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner public accountability meeting that the figure was “not acceptable”.

He said that the force had an average answer time of eight minutes and 47 seconds for October 2022 – four times the national standard.

The target for police force’s across the country is to answer 80% of non-emergency calls within two minutes.

ACC Walker said the long waiting times for 101 was the reason why the force’s abandonment rate was so high. This refers to the number of people giving up.

He said:

“On a daily basis we look at that from a chief officer team and I know there have been people waiting between half an hour and an hour on 101 on some days.

“It’s just not acceptable and this is why we have an abandonment rate of 20%. We should not be having more than 5% on 101.”

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ACC Walker told the meeting that Humberside Police had agreed to carry out a peer review of the force’s call handling and help them improve.

He added that the police were keen to improve the call times and return the control room to an “outstanding” rating.

Zoe Metcalfe, Mike Walker and Mabs Hussain, deputy chief constable, at the public accountability meeting.

He said:

“We know how we need to achieve that.

“It’s a question of putting the right plans in place and having the relevant discussions and then, over the next 12 months, it’s a question of getting back to where we need to be by serving the public of North Yorkshire with an outstanding control room.

“That needs to be the aim.”

Zoe Metcalfe, the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, said the aim needed to be “a lot quicker than 12 months”, but added she accepted that “these things take time”.

The move comes as concerns over the length of time it takes to answer 101 calls has been a long-running concern across the county.

Ms Metcalfe’s predecessor, Philip Allott, was told by North Yorkshire county councillors last year that the non-emergency line was “not fit for purpose and it hasn’t been fit for purpose for the last eight years” and that “the phone just doesn’t get answered”.

A government league table has revealed that North Yorkshire Police is the fourth slowest of 44 forces in the UK at responding to 999 calls.

The table, published by the Home Office today, shows North Yorkshire Police answered just 44% of 999 calls within the 10-second target in the last six months.

Police forces are required to answer 90% of emergency calls within 10 seconds.

The data, which covers from November 1, 2021, until April 30, 2022, shows that on average the force in North Yorkshire take 29.7 seconds to answer 999 calls.

A total of 43% of 999 calls are answered between 10 and 60 seconds.

Only Avon and Somerset police reached the 90% target, while Humberside Police was the worst with just 2% of calls answered on time.

Durham and South Yorkshire were the only other worse performing constabularies than North Yorkshire.

In response to the data, Lindsey Butterfield, North Yorkshire Police’s lead for contact management, said:

“Whilst there are a number of factors which impact on the speed at which 999 calls are answered, we recognise that we are not staffed to meet our current elevated levels of demand and we are investing in a number of measures to make improvements and get calls answered quicker.

“This includes putting in place enhanced recruitment plans for more staff within our force control room. We expect to have recruited 10% above our establishment by September 2022. The additional 10% allows for the levels of staff turnover that we experience.

“We have also established a pool of reserve staff to deal with administrative tasks on behalf of the call takers in the force control room. The additional costs for these interim arrangements have been funded by North Yorkshire’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.

“The dedicated team of staff who handle our calls within our force control room work incredibly hard, in a very challenging environment. We will be recruiting for our next intake very shortly so if you or someone you know is interested in joining the team, please keep an eye on the jobs section of our website or register your interest via our vacancies page.”

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The Home Office figures are the first time that performance for answering 999 calls from each police force has been published.

Priti Patel, Home Secretary, said:

“Calling 999 can literally be a matter of life and death. The public deserve to know that their local police force will be at the end of the phone, ready to leap into action at seconds’ notice to protect them from harm.

“Fundamentally, publishing this data is about driving up standards in our incredible emergency services even further, so that the public can have every confidence in the police’s ability to save lives and keep our streets safe.

“We can now see where forces are excelling and where vital improvements need to be made and I thank the police for their commitment to ensuring we maintain the best emergency services in the world.”