Figures show Suffolk Police call handling improvements
The force say it's thanks to recent investment into its Contact and Control Room
Suffolk Constabulary has seen improvements to its call handling performance and say it's thanks to recent investment into its Contact and Control Room (CCR).
Figures for 2024 to date (January to 21 February 2024) show that almost 91% of 999 calls were answered within the national performance target of 10 seconds.
Assistant Chief Constable Eamonn Bridger said: “Our data shows there has been a marked improvement in our call handling since July 2023 with significant increases in our response times in November and December 2023 when almost 93% of 999 calls were answered within target.
“We know how important it is to answer a call as quickly as possible and we remain on a great trajectory for the year ahead as we continue to work to improve our performance month on month.”
The number of 999 calls received by the CCR has increased by almost 30% over the past three years, from an average of 8,645 per month in 2019 to an average of 11,141 per month in 2023, and these numbers continue to grow.
To meet the demand of these increases and enhance its performance in responding to the public, the constabulary say they have been undertaking a long-term transformation within its control room.
This has been achieved largely by the investment from the council tax precept in the 2022/23 financial year, which has facilitated the recruitment of an additional 27 call takers and four police officers. These new call takers have been dual-trained to work in the dispatch teams that deploy officers to incidents.
Assistant Chief Constable Eamonn Bridger continued: “Our call takers play a crucial role in our policing; they deal with critical, frontline policing, and handle challenging situations. It is a stringent seven-stage recruitment process and our newest recruits are a major boost in making sure that we are performing an effective service that the public can rely on.
“In addition to our staff uplift, we have also made changes to our internal policies and processes to improve efficiencies to our call handling to both our emergency and non-emergency response and, this spring, we will be developing our digital team within the CCR to enhance online communication, thanks to the continued investment from the police and crime commissioner.”