101 call response poor, admits chief

WEST Midlands Police has admitted its dreadful performance in answering non-emergency 101 calls has not improved since a bombshell report revealed in December that 170,000 crime calls went unanswered because of a staffing crisis.

Deputy Chief Constable Louisa Rolfe said that the 999 performance has improved since December, but she conceded that the 101 performance had still not improved dramatically because of a focus on answering emergency calls instead.

She told the Strategic Police and Crime Board that the ongoing problems were “inextricably linked with resources”.

She said the latest figures showed 98 per cent of 999 calls were now being answered within the ten-second target time, compared to the previous figure of 84 per cent.

She did not provide any updated figures on the recent performance of non-emergency 101 calls.

But in December the force admitted that just 48 per cent of the 101 were answered within 30 seconds between April and December. The national target is 90 per cent.

Members of the public also spent an average of 48 seconds waiting for those 101 calls to be answered.

Deputy Chief Constable Rolfe said 20 new staff were taken on last month, 20 are due to be taken on in February and there are plans to employ another 40 in March.