Local councillor and London Assembly Member Lynne Featherstone has forced assurances from the Metropolitan Police that performance on 999 calls will be significantly improved.

The Met was responding to Ms Featherstone’s severe criticisms of their poor performance on answering emergency calls. The assurances were made at a high level meeting on Friday 11th October between Ms Featherstone and senior officers of the Metropolitan Police Service held in response to her concerns.

Recent figures have revealed that every month more than 5,000 * urgent calls for assistance are still unattended 23 minutes after the call was made. The statistics also showed that over 28% of all 999 calls took 63.5 seconds to answer * * . Given that these calls are made in crisis situations where every second counts, the performance was a cause of serious concern.

However, the Met has reacted positively to the uncovering of the problems. At their meeting with Ms Featherstone they stated their commitment to improving response, and outlined a number of measures put in place to bring about improvements. Ms Featherstone welcomed their efforts, but maintained a tough stance, stating that the MPA Performance Review Committee on which she sits would be closely monitoring progress over the next few months.

Ms Featherstone was particularly anxious to ensure that GLA-funded additional staff for the Met’s call centres, due in the New Year, would bring about a reduction in the time taken to answer 999 calls

Commenting, Ms Featherstone said:

“Time and time again local people bring up with me the issue of poor response times. When people are in real trouble, rapid response, both in answering 999 calls, and arriving on the scene is absolutely vital.

“It plays a highly significant role in building public confidence in policing, and, if performed successfully, can increase feelings of safety for people. That is why I consistently flag up this issue in my role as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and am working with the Met to bring about improvement.”

Notes:

* 21,869 calls over the period April – July, 5,467 per month were not responded to for at least 23 minutes.

* * Between mid-July and mid-August, the average time to answer the calls outside 15 seconds (over 28% of all calls) was 63.5 seconds.