Police chief admits she ‘gets’ 101 call frustration

Richard Evans Local Democracy Reporter

North Wales Police’s chief constable admitted she “gets” the frustration people feel when they can’t get through quickly on the 101 non-emergency number.

Amanda Blakeman said police are gradually moving towards a system in which more people report crimes online.

Speaking at a meeting at this week’s North Wales Police and Crime Panel (PCC) at Conwy ’s Coed Pella HQ, Wrexham councillor Nigel Williams questioned the chief constable on police demands.

A report presented to the panel revealed 101 calls were down in 2024/25 by 6.3% from the previous year, with 222,465 calls.

999 calls had reduced by 5.8%, with 111,524 calls. Police had received 86,573 reports digitally, with 24,254 webchats and 62,319 emails.

In the same period, police attended 62,960 incidents, an increase of 2.4%.

But Cllr Williams told the chief constable that a lot of residents were getting frustrated waiting for police to answer when calling the non-emergency 101 line.

Online reporting

Ms Blakeman said police were moving towards encouraging people to report online instead.

Cllr Williams said: “Just going through my personal experience of talking to residents, a lot of people do get frustrated, and they are on the phone for quite a long time for 101.

“I know we always give the advice if you can’t get 101, try digital instead because it can usually be quicker. I don’t know if they (the callers) actually do or not or they just give up.

“It doesn’t really give any context as regards to if are we just having lost calls and crimes going unreported because they can’t be bothered basically waiting to stay on 101 or are trying digital media instead. Have we got any figures on that?”

The chief constable said: “So our 999 demand is increasing. That has been on a steady increase in terms of the years.

“(There was) a notable spike over 2023, which was a national thing around Android phones, and that was around pocket dials of 999, so we saw a big spike in that. That has now been resolved.”

She then said the number of 999 calls were continuing to rise. She added: “Conversely, though, our 101 volume of calls are decreasing. As we move people towards digital contact options, which are increasing, so we are seeing a shift from 101 ringing up to using that digital contact, which is what we want to see.

“That includes webchat, email, and online home reporting platforms, so we are encouraging people to do that because we get to those very quickly.”

Frustration

But the chief constable admitted she understood why members of the public got frustrated when attempting to get through.

“I get the frustration that people feel if they are on their phone to 101,” she said.

“Our rates for answering, on the whole, are within that national average; however, what I would say is we are putting extra staff into our 101 demand. We are putting extra ability into there to ensure we can get through that demand quickly, and I’ve got a training course at the moment that is going through in order to be able to provide some flexibility in terms of the ability for us to be able to answer a call from a member of the public.”

She added: “It is one of the most important things we do is pick up the phone to our public and speak to them about the issue they’ve got.

“We can continue to put resources into that area; it continues to be an area we’ve got a real focus on; 999 increasing, 101 going down, better use of web chat, etc, but I still need the staff to be able to deal with those, and that’s something that I’m balancing within policing at the moment.”