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Emergency Calls

Volume 479: debated on Monday 1 September 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many telephone calls made to emergency 999 telephone operators in which the caller wished to report a crime were not treated as an appropriate 999 call in (a) North Kent, (b) Kent and (c) England and Wales in the latest period for which figures are available; (215715)

(2) how many telephone calls reporting crimes were made to (a) the 999 emergency number and (b) local police stations in the latest period for which figures are available; and what estimate she has made of the average (i) cost and (ii) duration of such calls.

The available data on 999 calls are given in the following table. The remainder of the information requested is not collected centrally.

Emergency call handling (provisional)1 by force for 2006-07

Local target time for answering calls (seconds)

Number of 999 calls received

Number of 999 calls answered within target

Avon and Somerset

10

281,336

241,038

Bedfordshire

15

97,357

91,611

Cambridgeshire

12

142,520

128,425

Cheshire

15

153,233

140,753

Cleveland

10

104,779

100,680

Cumbria

10

58,782

51,363

Derbyshire

10

159,633

150,555

Devon and Cornwall

10

268,763

229,554

Dorset

10

93,434

84,289

Durham

10

99,609

86,200

Dyfed-Powys

10

52,026

46,108

Essex

15

265,394

248,395

Gloucestershire

10

158,447

150,564

Greater Manchester

15

751,545

664,691

Gwent

10

109,401

91,656

Hampshire

10

290,987

256,908

Hertfordshire

10

168,388

156,607

Humberside

10

156,655

141,376

Kent

10

234,421

226,957

Lancashire

10

266,505

241,427

Leicestershire

15

151,539

134,660

Lincolnshire

10

88,478

84,875

London, City of2

15

1,106,053

904,245

Merseyside

10

374,864

342,795

Metropolitan police

15

2,278,003

1,852,490

Norfolk

10

104,119

93,656

Northamptonshire

10

117,115

107,929

Northumbria

15

264,349

245,006

North Wales

10

108,884

101,035

North Yorkshire

10

97,884

83,275

Nottinghamshire

10

264,571

233,873

South Wales

10

292,558

229,846

South Yorkshire

15

247,013

206,040

Staffordshire

10

168,324

147,867

Suffolk

10

100,351

94,763

Surrey

10

166,496

150,644

Sussex

10

272,173

261,162

Thames Valley

10

353,680

321,602

Warwickshire

15

86,996

71,797

West Mercia3

West Midlands

10

708,764

530,539

West Yorkshire

15

482,241

434,359

Wiltshire4

10

80,712

71,904

1 Data collected on behalf of HMIC who use them for inspection purposes only. These data are provisional, and have not been validated with forces.

2 Data are not available for City of London for quarters 2 to 3.

3 Data are not available for West Mercia for quarters 1 to 4.

4 Data are not available for Wiltshire for quarter 4.