People calling 101 'frustrated' and turning to 999 to get answered quicker - police chief
People are becoming frustrated with delays in getting through to Staffordshire Police via 101 which is leading them to call 999, the county's top cop has said.
Chief Constable Chris Noble said the average time to answer the calls was five minutes in December last year – down from 16 minutes in September 2020.
But while the force has been making improvements, it was still seeing people turn to emergency lines, with the chief urging people to "bear with us".
Mr Noble said: "In September 2020, around 101 calls, it was taking 16 minutes for them to be dealt with and at the end of December last year it was five minutes.
"Now we still want to be quicker than that, but we're making progress – real progress – with our emergency calls as well and that's a combination of bringing new staff in, training them all, and good leadership.
"There's a degree of frustration with people not being able to get someone on the end of the phone and sometimes we see people move off 101 onto (999). And my ask is 'please, if it's an emergency use it' but if it's not then please bear with us."
Figures from the force showed almost 30,000 more emergency calls were handled in the last year, which equated to an average of 75 more calls a day. The average time to answer the calls reduced in the last two months to 10.5 seconds in December.
Meanwhile 101 call volumes including triage have risen by 28,973 in the last year, which equated to an average of 79 extra calls a day. The longest wait times were in the summer months between 6pm and 9pm, while the wait were shorter between 9am and 5pm when higher volumes of calls were received.
