Response to our recent letter about this.
Subject: GMP 101 Service complaint letter.
Ms Williamson,
Good afternoon.
I have been passed a complaint letter that you have sent to the PCC’s office on the 15th June. Apologies for the delay in response, it has come via a few other avenues to get to me.
The complaint regards the length of time waiting for 101 calls to be answered and police investigation.
I cannot comment on the police investigation side of things, other than an investigation will only take place if a police incident has been created that requires investigation.
Before that of course, a phone call from a member of the public needs to be answered by GMP to take their report.
GMP analysts look back at the last two years of data to be able to forecast the number of calls we might take at any time of any day, down to 15 minute segments of information. Knowing the forecasted number of calls, allows us to know how many staff we need on that hour. The National Service Level Agreement for answering 999 calls sits at 90% to be answered within 10 seconds.
There is no National Service Level Agreement for answering 101 calls.
We do compile and keep data on all responses, and yesterday for example the average wait time for a 101 call to be answered was 3 minutes and 9 seconds and we answered 87% of our 999 calls within target.
If I take another example as the day you have written in, 15th June.
As mentioned above, we can analyse how many calls we expect to take on a date and are normally to within 3%.
On 15th June we expected to take 1376×999 calls and 2316×101 calls.
We actually took 1714×999 calls and 2641×101 calls.
Well before 15th June analysts would have looked at how many staff we need on that day, per hour, as number of calls per hour varies with the busier times being an evening. Taking a set time of 9pm at night, on that night, I needed 33 call-handlers on duty to manage the expected demand. I had 29. This is what we call “minus 4 for the hour.”
A call-handler is expected to take just over 6 calls an hour, the average call length is over 6 minutes a call with most calls requiring “after call work” – this can range from updating intelligence to passing to other areas of the business meaning a call-taker should be available to take a call 70% of the hour.
Back to 15th June at 21:00. We were forecast combined (101 and 999) calls of 209 calls, we took 274. I was already at minus 4 staff, so 4 staff x 6 calls the hour each is 24 possible calls missed already, out of a difference of 65 extra expected calls as it was. This shows how much demand can vary. The weather is always a feature of calls made too. Nice weather prompts more outside activity, youths playing out, music from gardens, drink related calls and other types of call.
Essentially the reduced capacity in answering 101 calls is down to the priority of 999 calls being answered as a HMIC target and reduced staffing via the austerity measures. On Friday night this weekend there will be hours when we are minus 12 to minus 14, that’s 14 call-handlers under how many we should have to take the expected number of calls. That’s at least 88 calls per hour we are probably going to struggle to answer in a timely manner.
Whilst not assisting your constituents in their request to get calls answered sooner, I hope the above goes someway to showing the challenges we are currently facing in reaching demand. GMP are committed to providing an excellent service to the public, which is why as part of my role we are always looking at ways to improve contact management.
Please feel free to contact should I be able to provide further assistance.
Regards,
Neil Smitham
OCB Call-Handling Manager