North Yorkshire Police among slowest in country responding to 999 calls

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.”

North Yorkshire Police not answering half of 999 calls on time

Half of 999 calls to North Yorkshire Police were not answered on time last month, according to the force’s own figures.

The force’s control room received 9,572 emergency calls — the highest ever number for the month of August.

However, 50 per cent of those were not answered within the 10 second target set nationally.

Half of calls met the target and 45 per cent were answered within five seconds, according to police.

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Deputy chief constable Phil Cain told a North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner accountability meeting yesterday that on average the force answered 999 calls within 22 seconds last month.

He said:

“We want to get a lot better at that.

“The challenge for us is balancing against the volume increase of three nines we are receiving since the easing of lockdown restrictions versus some of the staffing challenges we have got in the control room.”

DCC Cain said police were creating long and medium term plans, which include using technology and additional staff, to improve response times.

Overtime plan

The move comes as the county’s police, fire and crime commissioner, Philip Allott, approved £69,000 worth of funding in July for the force to create an overtime plan and hire six more call handlers for busier times.

An additional £70,000 was set aside should more funding be required until the end of October.

A decision notice on the commissioner’s website said:

“The requirement for this available funding will be reviewed at the end of October and the commissioner expects to see proposals brought forward through the next round of budget setting to ensure the longer-term sustainability of the force control room.”

Mr Allott told the Stray Ferret in July that he expected improvements in response times in the coming months following the easing of restrictions and after improvements to the service were made.