West Mercia Police hitting 101 target

West Mercia Police is said to be answering the majority of 101 calls within 30 seconds.

The target for the police force is to answer 50 per cent of their calls on the 101 number within 30 seconds, but the region's Police and Crime Commissioner, John Campion, has confirmed it is currently at 82 per cent.

The commissioner was talking about policing concerns at Whitchurch Town Council on Thursday.

Despite the target being hit, Mr Campion insisted there was still more work to do.

He said: "The number of 101 calls answered in the time frame has gone up.

"The service should be hitting a 50 per cent target, but that at the moment has been 80 per cent.

"For last week we received 9,301 calls on the 101 number to the force, and 82 per cent of those were answered within 30 seconds.

"These figures are better than call lines for say utility companies.

"Obviously sometimes we can't always hit those targets.

"When there is a major incident, or something like the recent storm Doris, then we are stretched.

"We have more people calling in, and we can't just unpack additional operators from a cupboard to deal with the calls."

Mr Campion also told the meeting that figures on answered 999 calls to the force were positive.

He also suggested ways of relieving the strain on the 101 number, by contacting local police officers in other ways.

He added: "The 999 service for West Mercia has 90 per cent of the calls being answered within 10 seconds.

"What we want to do is make sure there are many ways to contact the police, not just by the 101 number.

"Other ways could be e-mailing the local officers. They are now equipped with smart phones, so can answer emails on the go.

"There is a number of options on how the contact them.

"Social media is used by local police forces now, however we would not advise reporting crime that way, but information can be shared."