Three MILLION calls to 101 police line are ignored in just four years as some people forced to wait on line for more than two hours
A Freedom of Information request found the shocking results as people reporting non urgent crimes often give up
MORE than three MILLION calls to the police phone lines were ignored over the past four years, according to new figures.
People making calls to the non-emergency line, 101, waiting for more than two hours on some occasions before the call was picked up or they simply gave up.
The number is designed to deal with calls that are likely not to need an emergency response and was brought in during 2011 and 2012 to replace non-urgent calls clogging up the 999 lines and calling direct to individual police stations.
Figures gather by Freedom of Information requests found that out of the 36 police forces which responded, the number of unanswered calls from 2012 up until May of this year was 3,469,984.
Lancashire Constabulary was the worst at not picking up calls, with 486,284 out of 3,522,756 incoming calls ending before they were picked up.
At that force the longest a caller waited for someone to answer the phone was one hour, 18 minutes and 18 seconds with officers blaming a fault in the system.
The longest someone waited between all the forces was two hours and two minutes to Northamptonshire Police.
That call took place between June 2015 and May this year.
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Derbyshire Police left 356,222 calls through 101 unanswered since 2012, followed by Hampshire at 206,749 terminated calls.
One victim or witness tried to speak to South Wales Police for one hour, two minutes and five seconds, while the longest wait at Gloucestershire police was 60 minutes and 13 seconds.
A spokesman told the Daily Mail that in some cases there may not have been a realistic opportunity for the call handler to answer the phone.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: "When someone calls 101 they want to talk to the police about a stolen car, burglary, drug deal or damaged property.
"But this research shows that people are being left hanging on the phone for hours or putting the phone down because they can’t get someone to pick up.
"This is utterly unacceptable and makes a mockery of the 101 idea.
"Millions of calls are going unanswered and millions of crimes are going unreported."
The lowest figure was for Nottinghamshire police force, which had just four calls abandoned.
Last year Lewis Herbert, leader of Cambridge City Council, told a police and crime panel that even council officers had given up trying to report crime on 101.
He said at the time: "What is failing is the whole system … Fundamentally the calls are not being picked up at the different outposts around the country."
Following the reintroduction of the 101 service, callers are charged 15p regardless of how long they are on the phone for.
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