Surge in 999 calls to Staffordshire Police

Periods of demand have become more unpredictable since the Covid pandemic, police bosses have said, and the average time to answer 999 calls was 40.4 seconds in August.

But steps are being taken to improve response, community leaders and Staffordshire’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Ben Adams have been told. Action includes hiring and training more call handlers as well as the launch of a triage service to assess issues raised by callers dialling the non-emergency 101 service.

A report to Tuesday’s police performance meeting said: “Positive indications have been seen in September 2022 with the percentage of calls answered within 10 seconds increasing, and average time to answer is starting to see reductions. The latest week saw 73 per cent of 999 calls answered in 10 seconds and an average time to answer of 33.6 seconds.”

Emily McCormick, Chief Superintendent for Force Contact and Operations, told the meeting that on Monday night the force received more than 80 “repeat calls” in less than an hour because of a motorway incident. She said: “What we’re seeing post-Covid is real unpredictable spikes in demand.

“Nationally we used to be able to predict a pattern of demand. Generally you would start to see it increase around Thursday and through into Sunday and so we would build our staffing models in order to meet that demand.

“Unfortunately post Covid we’re not seeing the same patterns of demand. In Staffordshire our staffing model reflects what we would have seen nationally two or three years ago.

“We are in the process of reviewing our staffing model. That will take some time to be able to embed, so alongside that we are focusing on how we can drive hourly performance to meet some of those spikes and ensure we are getting the best out of our people.

“What we have seen since we have been focusing on that hourly performance is that we are performing really well across key periods of time throughout the day. And then unfortunately we will have a few hours where our performance will dip so far that skews the overall 24-hour performance.

“There’s still some way to go. But by bringing in some of our improvements, particularly around triage, we’re able to identify vulnerability at an early point and also to temper some of that demand that goes into the 101 or 999 queue.”

Chief Constable Chris Noble said: “We used to measure the high water mark of demand as New Year’s Eve – what was the busiest day of the year for contact. I asked how our demand in September mapped against the average New Year’s Eve demand and I think we had eight ‘New Years Eves’ in September alone.

“We didn’t know when they were going to arrive, so the challenge around demand isn’t just volume, it’s complete unpredictability. A Tuesday evening, maybe caused by an accident on a motorway or a whole raft of other things, puts a massive demand into the system and you can never efficiently resource against that.”

Speaking at the latest Police, Fire and Crime Panel meeting, held last week, Mr Adams said the surge in demand was not just being seen in Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent. “Demand is probably 20per cent up across the country on 999 compared with pre-Covid for all sorts of reasons; not least more issues with football matches, more protests causing redirection of police services around the country, but also quite a lot of people calling through to the police that might be better supported and handled by other organisations”, he said.

“There has been some considerable investment in the contact centre, not just in training people who are starting to become fully capable in taking calls on their own. It takes some months to do that.

“A new triage system means a lot of people calling in are redirected very quickly if they’ve made a poor choice in calling those numbers. We’re keeping the times at about where they were; still not good enough, but considering the demand’s gone up considerably and the complexity of those calls, we haven’t seen a deterioration in our performance.

“Other areas are struggling; in fact across the region there has been quite a bit of forces picking up 999 at busy times for each other. That’s mirrored across the country as well.”

Cannock Chase district and county councillor Bryan Jones said: “I think we’d all welcome the improved numbers in the contact centre. We want to improve 101 and 999 responses.

“Unfortunately we’ve seen a 20per cent increase but you say we’re where we were at based on the new staff and the increase in demand. What further work do you think we can do to improve that with all things that we have put in place?”

Mr Adams replied: “I think we’ve got to see some of this stuff embed now, particularly bring through the new staff. It’s about six months to get them fully up to speed.

“We’ve got another tranche coming in as well for next year. We find quite a number of people coming into that go onto the police service, so we’re training them and then they move on again, which is positive, but it’s important to have that stability.

“The service has improved – a number of people will say they are now getting a rapid response. It’s just not yet where it needs to be, there are a whole series of things that are being worked in and I think realistically we are four or five months into the practical application of the work.

“Whilst we’ve been discussing the issue for some time, the arrival of the new Chief Constable in December and him bringing in some expertise from other forces has really accelerated this in the last two or three months. We’re discussing some other stuff as well like changing of shift patterns and we will continue to monitor it very carefully.”

Stoke on Trent City Council member Jackie Barnes said: “I am very pleased to hear it is improving in the 101 and 999 calls. But I have been involved in two calls, one to 999 and one to 101.

“I had a resident contact me – it was a 999 call due to ASB (antisocial behaviour). They were having glass bottles and metal things randomly being thrown onto cars and windows.

“He contacted me because he did the 999 call expecting them to come out and it was an hour later they came out. Obviously the offenders had gone; maybe some explanation might go down well.”

Mr Adams responded that tackling antisocial behaviour remained a priority for his office. He added: “Mrs Barnes, it is still not right and we have got to get this contact stuff right.

“A response in an hour to ASB is possibly not unreasonable depending on the time of day and what else is happening. If it was on the night they had got three vans full of officers at Shenstone dealing with the anti-Israeli protest that could well explain why we hadn’t got enough officers in their patch that evening.”