Busy festive period sees West Yorkshire Police take nearly 16,000 emergency 999 calls

Friday, 3 January 2020 10:20

West Yorkshire Police took nearly 16,000 emergency 999 calls and over 21,000 non-emergency 101 calls in the 10 days leading up to New Year’s Eve.

The end of the year typically marks the busiest day for the Force in terms of call-handling and on top of the 15,901 emergency calls and 21,032 calls to the 101 number in the run up, call handlers handled 3,964 contacts on New Year’s Eve itself.

Speaking on the force’s activity, the Senior Contact Manager for West Yorkshire Police, Tom Donohoe, said: “New Year’s Eve and the 10 days building up to are always very busy days for West Yorkshire Police and it was no exception as 2019 came to an end.

“The number of calls we took was very similar to the same period for last year, but we did see a significant rise in the number of online contacts we took – over 12,000.

“The online contact option is important to us as a Force as it allows people who want to let us know about something that isn’t an emergency the chance to contact us at a time to suit them and leading takes strain off of the 101 and 999 numbers.

“Despite the huge volume of calls we took, we managed to answer calls to the 999 emergency number within 11 seconds on New Year’s Eve. The average queue time in the ten days up to the day was 5.4 seconds.”

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