New data has revealed that 45% of calls to 101 are being abandoned before being answered by a call handler, with the average wait time now in excess of 15 minutes.
A recent report presented to the local Police & Crime Panel by the Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones, has made clear the current situation facing Islanders and those across Hampshire when trying to contact Police on the non-emergency number.
Between April and August this year – a 4-month period – a total of 243,768 calls were made to 101, with 140,120 of those calls being directed through to a call handler.
Shockingly, of those 140,000 callers trying to report a crime or other incident, 63,230 (45.13%) abandoned the call before speaking to anyone.
During this 4-month period, the average time to answer was 15 minutes and 9 seconds – that’s a massive increase of 6 minutes and 52 seconds compared to the 2022/23 yearly average, which may account for the higher abandonment rate.
A total of 41,293 calls were abandoned after the caller waited more than 3 minutes for an answer, with 21,937 abandoned within the initial 3 minutes.
Of the 76,890 calls that were answered, the majority (68%) were answered after more than 3 minutes.
Looking at the last full year’s figures, for the year 2022/23, a total of 583,521 calls were made to 101 with 379,383 calls directed through to a call handler. Of those almost 380,000 calls, 126,360 were abandoned (33.31%) with 77,995 abandoned after waiting more than 3 minutes.
Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary says that challenges with recruitment are partially to blame for the increased waiting time.
Assistant Chief Constable Robert France has said:
“Our call handlers work extremely hard every day to answer the hundreds of calls that come in via our non-emergency number, and we know it can be frustrating for members of the public when they can’t get through quickly.
“There are a number of factors that have affected our response times, including some challenges with our recruitment, which has meant at busy times our call handlers have had to prioritise answering our emergency 999 calls, which I am sure people would understand.
“When people call us on 101, they will hear a message which gives them information for calls not related to policing, and how they can report online for non-urgent criminal matters. We vary that message to make it clear when we are particularly busy, and I want to thank the members of the public who then choose to either go online, call back later or attend one of our police front counters as this allows our call handlers the capacity to deal with the more urgent or emergency calls at peak periods.
“We are currently working to help us better understand the proportion of people who abandon their call following the advice given when they call the non-emergency number, versus those who want to speak to an operator but are not able to get through.”
Yet another sign of how bad the situation is in this country, it is clear that with many organizations not enough people are employed to carry out good service, when this includes GPs, Ambulances, and now police 101, it is clear something has to change.
This country really has gone downhill over a number of years, we are all aware living on an Island the transport across the Solent is a very local example of poor service that is showing little to no sign of improvement. We apparently live in one of the richest Countries in the world, unfortunately, that is not showing in people’s everyday lives.
All the scum bags are here now with their mates! Robbers etc
Britain is no longer one of the richest countries in the world and since 1997 our GDP per capita has been in gradual decline every year at the same time that our population has ballooned through mass uncontrolled low skilled immigration – the nation now has the highest taxes in 70 years with massive state borrowing required to supplement millions of low paid, mostly imported workers and their non-working families through in work and supplementary benefits, not to mention the huge drug and crime problems we now have that were also imported from places like Albania, Somalia and Afghanistan
Why employ two people to do two jobs when you can employ one person to do both jobs
And neither gets done!
Kev they are telling you crime has droped , the only reason is that people are fed up waiting to report the crime, the crime has either now been commited or they hang up, as a waste of time .
Yet this council every year gets more money for the police and this is well above the inflation rate NOT JUST ONE YEAR but every year were is all this money being spent.
Joke? years ago any trouble outside the babalu, the ambulance used to arrive 30 mins before the police.!
Appalling, I said this all along . All the time you see in media police asking for info, CCTV etc and to call101 and state reference number,how many of these 60,000 plus abandoned calls could of given vital information to solve a crime or protect someone. It’s partly government fault wanting excess info recorded when you call, can’t just tell police important stuff without everything from you’re gender,dob,address, phone,email, marital status etc etc. As said before having need to call MET police on 101 you get straight through,no wasted time with recorded message telling you to go on line. Employ more staff, after all we are paying.
Even with CCTV of the crimes, all the police keeps saying is we have not got the resauces .?
Partially to blame ? So what or who is responsible for the other part , bad decisions by management. Decisions being made by people with little or no experience of Policing
on the street at the sharp end
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys….
The contact methods and systems for getting in touch with the police force are best described as diabolic but probably designed that way.
Challenges with recruitment, get more money sitting at home…..
I rang them over 20 years ago, and no one ever showed up!
I tried 101 twice this year and gave up both times after waiting over an hour.
i likewise a compete waste of time ,yet the council tax payers keeps giving more money
Just goes to show how ineffective these PCC’s are. Time to get rid of them and use the money to employ more front line staff.
The Law are only employed to protect Royals, Politicians and so called
Elite persons and of course the London Mayor.
NO ONE ELSE MATTERS!
Why is there a Cop Shop in Regent Street Shanklin
Yet businesses in Shanklin park on both sides of the Street
and some park on the pavement, and in the Loading Bay OUTSIDE
YUMMY TUMMY’S and DOMINO’S PIZZA
and nothing gets done about it?????
IT IS DANGEROUS
My experiance precisely when I witnessed an assault.
I had no answer to the first three calls that I made after I witnessed the incident which left me wondering what to do. Eventually the my next call was responded too.
15 mins? More like an hour.
I hung up after waiting for 58 mins. Total waste of time!
maybe this is what the police constablary wants,
Better off ringing the Samaritans
Cheaper and more effective to have A.i robots on every street
Please try to keep the phone lines clear and report online, go to online reporting and choice of 21 options!
I reported a assault by the town in Ryde, the police said they’d look into and get back to me and that’s over a year and a half. I wouldn’t know who to call in an emergency
I reported a male assaulting a female and the call handler was not interested in the assault just getting all my personal information, despite being only a few minutes from a police station no one responded to the call, i was on the phone for nearly 15 minutes before i hung up in disgust.
I called 101 because I was worried about a female I thought might be vulnerable,
I hung up after nearly 30 minutes of waiting, I hope she wasn’t vulnerable.