‘BT lag is affecting 999 response time’
FORCE SAYS HOME OFFICE FIGURES ARE FLAWED
POLICE chiefs in Humberside have hit out at allegedly erroneous figures that appear to show the force as one of the country’s worst for picking up 999 calls.
Data released by the Home Office yesterday claims that just 2 per cent of 999 calls directed to the force’s control room between November and April were picked up within ten seconds. The average waiting time for someone to pick up in this period was 12 seconds, according to the figures.
The vast majority of 999 calls to the force - 95 per cent - were picked up between ten and 60 seconds, the figures show. A remaining 3 per cent were picked up after one minute.
However, Humberside Police says the figures are an inaccurate reflection of the region, saying they do not account for the time taken for operators BT to divert calls to them.
Humberside’s Deputy Chief said that, currently, the diversion was adding an extra seven seconds onto people’s calls.
“I welcome any data that enables the public to see how their local force is performing and we are committed to fully supporting this approach,” said DCC Paul Anderson.
“However, in this instance, the data presented does not accurately reflect the call handling performance of 999 calls once these are passed to Humberside Police. At present, despite representations, this data still includes the whole journey of a 999 call.
“This starts with a BT operator, and crucially, includes the time taken for them to divert the call to Humberside Police. The time this process takes varies significantly across the whole country, and in our region, there are delays of up to seven seconds for the call to be passed to us and this delay is currently included in this data.”
The issue has been raised with the Home Office, the Deputy Chief Constable added.
He said: “We are now working closely with communications providers to understand why such delays sometimes occur in us being passed the calls.
“Humberside Police have just moved to a state-of-the-art contact and control centre, providing us with one of the UK’S leading Police call
centres. Once the calls are received by Humberside Police, both 999 and 101 call handling performance remains one of the most timely and effective in the country.”
Other concerns have been raised that just one force in England and Wales met the national target in the most recent six months. Guidelines say that police should aim to be answering 90 per cent of all 999 calls within ten seconds.
Police forces in England and Wales answered over 3.7 million calls in under ten seconds and a further 1.2 million in under 60 seconds between November 2021 and
April this year. Neighbouring police force Lincolnshire was quickest at answering, according to the figures, with an average (median) answering time of three seconds.
Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd of the National Police Chiefs Council said: “We know that there are sometimes lag times in connecting calls to the police and these vary across the country, however this isn’t for a member of public to resolve, it is for us within policing to look at our infrastructure and work with our key partners, including BT, to improve the experience of a member of public calling 999.”