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High standard of response to calls for assistance

Northumbria Police

1 September 2008


People who call Northumbria Police for emergency and non-emergency assistance are being reassured that the service is one of the best in the country.
The force continually meets its target for answering both emergency and non-emergency calls. And a recent national survey showed that public satisfaction with call handling by Northumbria Police at 91.8% is one of the highest when compared with other similar forces in the country.
To maintain these exacting standards, all aspects of staff performance are continuously monitored as the force strives to further improve the quality of its call handling service.
Recent media coverage highlighted that the call handling performance of a very small number of staff fell well below the standards expected and the quality of service we strive to provide to the public.
Reassuringly, this problem was identified, not as a result of complaints by the public, but by our own internal monitoring designed to build on our commitment to improving the quality of our service. The staff concerned were dealt with fairly but robustly. One employee was dismissed, another resigned and a further two are currently being dealt with through a disciplinary process.
Chief Superintendent Jim Campbell, head of the force's Communications Department, said: "I must reassure the public that our call handlers perform to an extremely high standard. The actions in this instance relate to only four out of a total of 360 staff. It was the effectiveness of our management systems that enabled us to pinpoint this and the same systems have now shown that the problem has been resolved since action has been taken.
"I must stress that at no stage were any members of the public put at risk. The calls affected were lower priority, non- emergency calls and the subsequent investigation showed that the vast majority of callers subsequently rang back and had their service request dealt with.
"We also have safeguards in place which ensure that an emergency 999 call is always dealt with. If not answered by a call taker it is taken back by the BT operator and is re-presented. If a 999 call is lost for any reason, the number is recorded and the caller is rung back to ensure that they are not at risk.
"In terms of the number of calls involved, the Northumbria control rooms receive in excess of 2,000 calls per day.  In a year this equates over 250,000 emergency 999 calls and nearly 500,000 non-emergency calls. This incident involved between 150 and 200 calls during August which equates to 0.2% of the total for that month."