NORTH Yorkshire County Council has called for an urgent review of the 101 non-emergency police number, after hearing of residents spending up to six hours on the phone to speak to someone.

The county council’s Police and Crime Panel says it wants a review of the facility for reporting non-urgent issues to ensure it is “fit for purpose” in North Yorkshire.

At a meeting on July 20, panel members spoke about their concerns to North Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan when they shared reports from residents spending up to six hours on the phone waiting to speak to someone in the police’s control room. They said some residents had to either abandon their call or consider calling the 999 emergency number instead.

North Yorkshire County Councillor Carl Les, chair of the panel and leader of the county council, said: “The panel has taken a keen interest in the development of the 101 service for some time.

“While we have been supportive of recent improvements, the recent surge in call volumes requires urgent attention and we will be keeping this under review with the commissioner over the coming months.”

In response to the concerns, the commissioner said there had been a spike in call volumes to the 101 service between April and June, with demand rising by up to 20 per cent.

She said this was not purely an issue in North Yorkshire but that a similar trend has been seen in police forces nationwide, where calls to the 999 emergency service also rose sharply during this time.

The reasons for these increases were currently unclear, but the commissioner said Chief Constable Dave Jones was taking the issue very seriously, with work under way to investigate and to make sure that adequate resource was available.