Police take on extra staff in bid to reduce phone response times
Staffordshire Police are taking on 35 extra staff in a bid to reduce the length of time it takes to answer non-emergency phone calls from members of the public.
Agency staff are also being brought in to try to improve performance before the new workers are recruited.
A new £1 million state-of-the-art control room has been opened at the force's Stafford headquarters where staff will deal with the calls – rather than being based across two sites at the Stafford HQ and in Hanley.
Bosses admit that staffing problems have led to an increase in the time it takes to respond to phone calls.
It comes after it was revealed that the force answered 78 per cent of the 350 999 calls-a-day it receives within 10 seconds in July – compared to 94 per cent in February, 2013.
And people calling the force's 101 non-emergency number are now left waiting on average 113 seconds for their calls to be answered – compared to 20 seconds in March, 2013.
Some 19 staff from Hanley have now moved to Stafford, and 22 call-handlers are to return to front-line policing, leaving 146 staff working at the force's call centre.
Acting Chief Constable Jane Sawyers said: "We did have two control rooms – one at Hanley and one at headquarters. They have both closed and we have a bigger, purpose-built control room at headquarters.
"A lot of staff have transferred from Hanley, but some didn't want to go to Stafford. We didn't know how many wouldn't want to move.
"There are also now very few police officers working in the control room.
"We want to get the extra staff in by early next year but, because of training, we can't get them all in at once. There will be intakes in October, November and January."
Staffordshire's police and crime commissioner Matthew Ellis said: "I have had feedback from public meetings where people have complained about some 101 calls and even 999 calls not being answered quickly enough.
"Performance has dropped. Moving to the new control room will make the response faster."
The force receives 350 calls-a-day to the non-emergency number, but there are concerns that residents will be reluctant to use the service in the future.
