A Freedom of Information request has revealed that more than one-quarter of police forces across England and Wales are failing to hit their targets for answering the non-emergency police number 101.
The 101 number was introduced in 2011 to channel non-urgent crime reporting to the police away from the 999 emergency number.
In 2013, however, more than one million people who called the 101 number failed to get an answer, with callers to 101 being cut off or disconnected – or simply hanging up. A caller in Lancashire who persisted was left waiting for one hour and 18 minutes before police operators answered the call.
A total of 1,071939 callers failed to get through to the 101 number in 2013 – an increase of 26% on the previous year.
Just a handful of police forces hitting targets for answering the 101 non-emergency police number, including Wiltshire, North Wales, Essex and Lincolnshire, which all managed to meet their own targets of answering 90% of calls within 30 seconds.
Crime chiefs have called to failings among other forces “completely unacceptable”.
Policing Minister Michael Penning said that police forces which are failing to meet 101 call-answering targets would be given support to help them “identify where improvements can be made”.
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