Contact:Supt. Julie Earle Head of Call Management

Contact:Supt. Julie Earle Head of Call Management

Hampshire Police Authority
Performance Committee Item: 6
26 January2009
Call Handling Performance
Report of the Chief Constable

Contact:Supt. Julie Earle Head of Call Management

Tel: 0845 045 45 45 Ext: 718130

1.Summary

1.1 This report provides the Performance Committee with a summary of the call handling performance data for the Constabulary.

1.2The report provides details of:

  • 999 Call Performance
  • Switchboard Call Performance
  • Non-emergency Call Performance
  • Crime Recording Bureau Call Performance
  • Emergency Incident Attendance Times.

2.Recommendations

This report recommends that:

2.1 The authority notes theperformance report.

3.Efficiency Implications

3.1Not applicable.

4.999 Call Performance

4.1All 999 calls are initially received by British Telecom or Cable & Wireless, before being forwardeddirectly to the Control Room and Force Enquiry Centre (FEC) without going through the constabulary switchboard. Whilst, there will be some variation depending on demand levels at the time, the average number of calls received each month is 20,996 and the average wait time for 999 callers once they have transferred to the Control Room or FEC is 4 seconds.

4.2The National Call Handling Standard (NCHS) target service level is to answer 90% of those incoming 999 calls within 10 seconds. For the period April to November, ourservice level is 89.41%. As can be seen by the second graph below historically the 999 call performance dips between May and August when the 999 call volumes are at their highest and performance improves steadily over the remainder of the year as 999 call volumes decline. The service level performance for this year is predicted to meet the NCHS target and be at 90.63% by year-end.

4.3The national Policing Pledge requirement is that we ‘aim to answer 999 calls within 10 seconds’.

4.4The following graphs show the performance more fully:

4.5In comparison to the same period last year (April – November), Emergency call volumes are down by 4%.

5.Switchboard Performance

5.1The Switchboard answer all non-emergency calls coming in on 0845 and 101 lines and also internal calls from Constabulary lines, on average, they receive 132,556 calls per month, with an average wait time of 3 seconds. They triage calls and transfer them to the appropriate staff.

5.2The Switchboard consistently answers more than 90% of calls within its target time of 10 seconds. The year to date service level at the end of November is 99.32%, despite volumes of calls to the Switchboard currently running at 10% higher than the same period last year.

6.Non-emergency Call Performance

6.1Once triaged by the switchboard The Force Enquiry Centre (FEC) deal with the majority of non-emergency calls from the public and receives an average of 69,864 calls per month. These calls take more time to resolve and are slower time issues.

6.2The NCHS target is to answer 90% of incoming non-emergency calls within 30 seconds and for the period April to November; the service level is 77.15%. It is predicted that this will be 80.28% by year-end. Whilst this is below the NCHS target this represents a considerable improvement in performance on the last two years. Non emergency call performance was at 65.9% at year-end for 2007-2008.

6.3The national Policing Pledge requirement is that we ‘answer all non-emergency calls promptly’ no specific target measure has been set.

6.4There has been 10% drop in call volumes compared to the same period last year. The number of callers abandoning their calls has decreased from 7.73% to 3.56%.

7.Call flow changes to maximise resource use to meet demand

7.1The call flow for both emergency 999 calls and non-emergency calls has been closely scrutinised by the Call Management Department this year, and modelling of demand and resourcing used to determine how performance can be maximised by better using the available resources.

7.2As a result on the 1st of December 2008 a new call flow and prioritisation of call delivery has been put in place to achieve further improvement in performance on 999 and non-emergency calls. Whilst we are still in the first month of this change and it is too early to quantify the benefits, early indications are promising and an immediate improvement in performance on both types of call has been seen. For the first ten days of operation of the new call flow 999 performance is at 97.16 % calls answered in ten seconds and non-emergency performance is at 89.86 % calls answered in 30 seconds.

8.Crime Recording Bureau Performance

8.1The Crime Recording Bureau (CRB) records occurrences into the Records Management System (RMS) from phone calls made to them from police officers. The CRB receives an average of 30,253 calls per monthand theinternal target we have set is to answer 90% of incoming calls within 60 seconds. The service level for the period April to November is 87.39%.

8.2This year has seen an increase of 3.6% in call volumes compared to the same period last year. At year end performance is predicted to be at 87.65% an improvement compared to 2007-2008 where year end performance was at 86.8%.

9.Attendance times forEmergency Incidents

9.1Since April 2008, there have been 19,427 Emergency (grade 1) incidents created on Altaris (the command and Control system). Of those which needed an officer, 90.4% have had a Unit dispatched to them within 4 minutes meeting the NCHS target of 90% deployed in 4 minutes. In90% of incidents an officer attended within 15 minutes which meets the NCHS target and is an improvement in performance over the same period last year where attendance within 15 minutes wasat 86.2 %.

9.2The national Policing Pledge requires that for emergency deployments in urban areas we aim to get to incidents safely within 15 minutes and in rural areas within 20 minutes.

Section 100D (Local Government Act 1972) background papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB the list excludes:

  1. Published works; and,
  2. Documents that disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

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