Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
1) In each of the last three financial years (20/21), (21/22) and (22/23) how many calls to (a) 999 and (b) 101 were recorded as NOT having been answered?
2) In each of the last three financial years (20/21), (21/22) and (22/23) what was the average time for a response to be connected to an operator on a (a) 999 and (b) a 101 call?
3) In each of the last three financial years (20/21), (21/22) and (22/23) what was the longest time it took for a caller to get a response to a (a) 999 and (b) a 101 call? For each example state the date of the call and how long it took to be answered.
4) In each of the last three financial years (20/21), (21/22) and (22/23) how many calls to (a) 999 and (b) 101 took more than 5 (five) minutes to be connected to an operator.
For the avoidance of any doubt when I refer to "response" what I am seeking is the time between the call being made and the call being answered by a handler, NOT the time between the call being made and the time when the police provide a physical response to the incident/emergency.
In Response:
1.
|
Year |
999 |
Disparity |
101 |
Disparity |
||
|
Call Volume |
Answered |
Call Volume |
Answered |
|||
|
2020/21 |
213,083 |
212,525 |
558 |
301,828 |
284,506 |
17,322 |
|
2021/22 |
290,917 |
283,160 |
7,757 |
260,245 |
179,842 |
80,403 |
|
2022/23 |
300,405 |
298,425 |
1,980 |
228,182 |
169,481 |
58,701 |
2.
|
Year |
999 |
101 |
|
2020/21 |
0:08:00 |
0:49:00 |
|
2021/22 |
0:29:00 |
5:48:00 |
|
2022/23 |
0:15:00 |
3:32:00 |
3.
|
Year |
999 |
Date |
101 |
Date |
|
2020/21 |
0:05:13 |
Wed 26/08 |
0:48:06 |
Wed 26/08 |
|
2021/22 |
0:19:17 |
Fri 26/11 |
5:32:00 |
Fri 26/11 |
|
2022/23 |
0:09:31 |
Sat 23/04 |
4:00:58 |
Fri 31/03 |
4.
Information at this point is not already held statistically and to attempt to extract from systems would far exceed the permitted time constraints, therefore Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00
You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for that part of your request.
Rather than refuse your full request under Section 12 we have provided what we have been able to, as a gesture of goodwill, at the other points above.
The below caveats should be noted when viewing the response above:
- The data has been taken from Systems in the Contact handling stream. The call volume is the number of calls that were not abandoned before the threshold.
- Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
- The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
