Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will publish a list of each regional call centre that handles emergency calls to police forces in England.

The handling of 999 emergency calls is an operational matter for the police. It is for Chief Constables and democratically elected Police and Crime Commissioners to decide how to deploy resources and handle communications with the public, based on their experience and knowledge of the communities they serve.

Information on the number of police staff dedicated to answering emergency calls to the police is not held centrally by the Home Office.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size of the police workforce in England and Wales on a biannual basis in the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales

Information on the number of police officers, police staff and Police Community Support Officers by function is published annually in tables F1, F2 and F3 accompanying the police workforce statistics as at 31 March. These include the number of police staff working under function 2b – Dealing with the Public (Central Communications Unit). Figures are given for all of England and Wales and also broken down by Police Force Area. A definition of what roles are included within function 2b can be found in table F4.

The Home Office does not have a list of regional call centres for emergency calls to police forces nor average waiting times for answers to emergency calls to the police nationally or regionally on i) Friday night and ii) Saturday night over the last five years. However, in the Beating Crime Plan, the Government has committed to publishing league tables for call answering times and ensuring that the public know how responsive their local force is when they call them for help. Publication is scheduled for May 2022.