Commissioner’s review finds Police 101 service 'unacceptable'

Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Hogg has today (Thursday 20 November) published the findings of a review, undertaken by his office, into Devon and Cornwall’s Police 101 non-emergency service.

The main findings of the report are:

• Calls are answered promptly at the switchboard and within times that are consistent with other forces, or equivalent non-emergency contact services;
• However, the average waiting time to speak with someone that can handle the callers query is over six minutes;
• Half of all callers wait over 10 minutes and one in five callers waits more than 20 minutes;
• Call handlers are conscientious and caring and deal with callers in a professional manner;
• Performance priorities within the contact centre are unclear meaning opportunities are missed to improve service though a greater focus on these priorities;
• The technology is not fit for purpose and is a substantial barrier to delivering a better service.

“The public has been telling me they are not satisfied with the 101 service,” said Mr Hogg

”I commissioned this review to find out the accurate picture about the quality of service.

“This report clearly shows that the service being provided is not acceptable and must be improved.

“I will continue to closely monitor performance until such time as I am satisfied that it is improving and a reasonable service is being provided.”

Mr Hogg has agreed with the Chief Constable that an improvement plan is put in place to improve the quality of service.

The key elements of this plan will be to:

• To review the processes that determine the journey each call takes;
• To assess the level of resources (staffing and ICT) required to provide an acceptable service;
• To recruit and train the necessary staff;
• To ensure that plans to replace the technology are hastened and that the effective checks are undertaken to ensure that any new technology will fully support a high quality service.

“It is clear that control room staff are working very hard and doing the best they can in difficult circumstances” said report author, OPCC Performance Manager Dr Karen Vincent.

“However, staff are frustrated in providing a good service by poor technology, a lack of support from wider corporate systems, such as email and answerphone, and an inability to match the staffing resources more effectively to the caller demand.

“It is not possible at this time to say what is an acceptable length of time for calls to be dealt with, as this will need to be assessed and costed. It is clear that some improvements could be made immediately, whilst substantial improvements are on offer following the introduction of new systems and staffing resources.”