North Yorkshire Police are still missing 999 and 101 call handling targets

North Yorkshire Police are still struggling to meet its targets for answering 999 and 101 calls. 

Jason Dickson – Superintendent Customer Contact, gave an update at a Police Fire and Crime Commissioner meeting yesterday (Tuesday). 

He said that some days they did meet targets other days they didn’t and they were seeing a huge increase in the number of calls to both services.

“The level of performance we’re seeing currently is not the level of performance that we are aiming to achieve.

“We are not meeting our average targets consistently.

“I’m not going to sort of try and say that that we’re satisfied with this level of service because we’re not.”

Superintendent Jason Dickson went on to say this about emergecy and non-emergency calls: “It’s a very clear increase since 2017. That’s gone up by over 12%.

“In 2019, we had a significant drop in the number of 999 calls which matches the national lockdown sensors. lockdowns have been reduced.

“You can see there’s a significant increase since then.”

The police say they are doing lots of different things to get the level of service up to where they need to be.

92 extra staff have joined the Force Control Room in York in the last two years.

There have been issues with covid though, affecting the number of training places available. Social distancing reducing the class sizes for example.

A new intake of trainees is due in March and then again in the summer and at the end of the year. They are also putting forward a business case to expand the numbers of staff in control too.