Response to 999 call answering data release

Message from Humberside Police:

Following the Home Office release today (Tuesday, 31 May) of data highlighting how quickly police forces answer 999 calls, our Deputy Chief Constable Paul Anderson has said: “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.

“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 7 seconds for the call to be passed to Humberside Police and this delay is currently included in this data.

“We have raised this issue with the Home Office, and 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.”