EXCLUSIVE: Look inside Cumbria Police 999 call centre

Following our exclusive FOI to Cumbria Police, we've been able to discover just how quick the force are at answering their calls, and how many they are receiving a month from January until June of this year.

They receive from anywhere between 5,000 and 7,000 calls per month throughout this period, never dropping below 99.69 per cent of calls answered in under 60 seconds.

The force itself sets it's own standards of trying to answer over 90 per cent of calls in under 10 seconds, and in the last financial year managed to beat this target.

Chief Inspector Graham Hawley runs the centre located in Penrith, he said: "At the end of the day we've got to remember that if a member of the public phones 999, they are asking for help, we have to make sure we answer that in a timely manner.

"I think it's 99.6 per cent of calls we answer in under 60 seconds, but what we do internally as a force is target at least 90 per cent of calls within 10 seconds.

"We've been fortunate in improvements we've made in policy with call handling and staffing in the past few years. In the last financial year we answered 94.5 per cent of our 999 calls in under 10 seconds. It ranks us about 8th nationally across the country."

Impact of hoax calls

Through our FOI we also discovered a concerning figure. In June one 999 call took around 5 minutes to be picked up.

This, however, was not a case of them failing to pick up an emergency call in a timely manner, it was in fact a hoax call that had made numerous attempts to get through to 999 throughout that day.

Chief Inspector Hawley explains more on how they deal with this and the impact it can have: "If we have calls that take a number of minutes to answer we will look at that. That specific call was a dropped 999.

"It was a 999 call, no request for police, but in the background you could hear someone laughing and joking.

"We've got to treat every call as if it is a genuine call. We had to work with telecoms providers to try and identify that person incase they need help. The frustrating thing is if that phone keeps dialing 999 over and over, then potentially our call takers can't help anyone that is genuinely wanting help.

"Police control rooms are not an exact science. We have data going back a number years so that we have a rough idea of when our busy periods are going to be and when our quiet periods are going to be. We change our staffing to meet that demand.

"Any calls that come into 999 though, if we get more than one from the same number in quick succession, it does add a strain as it could be 2 or 3 operators that are trying to deal with the same incident.

"It can be a challenge."

Who are the operators

During our exclusive visit to the call centre we also discovered that the 999 phone line is not managed by civilian call handlers, but by actual trained police officers.

Cumbria is one of, if not the only, police force in the country to do this.

They believe it provides the best possible chance to provide support to victims of serious crime in terms of harm prevention and preservation of evidence, while also freeing up officers that are 'on the ground' from having to attend less serious matters that can be dealt with at a later time through appointments.

"100 per cent of our call takers are officers. As soon as a member of the public calls for help they are speaking to an experienced police officer with knowledge of law and procedure who will be able to help them almost immediately." Chief Inspector Hawley said.

"If there is a safeguarding issue that needs to be addressed straight away our call operators can do that without having to wait for officers to attend a location.

"I see the benefit of that in relation to the number of incidents that we can deal with in that initial first contact to prevent having to send an officer out to the scene. But also for victims of serious assault, rape, burglary, a police officer can start saying what things they need to do now to start safeguarding, keep themselves safe and preserve evidence."