Crime victims reporting burglaries and other offences are abandoning up to a third of calls to the police 101 ‘non-emergency’ hotline amid lengthy waits.
Figures obtained by the Daily Mail show how police across the country force victims to endure huge delays before getting help.
Four forces revealed the longest time they took to answer a 101 call was more than three hours. A further four took over two hours and five more than an hour.
In many cases the 101 service is the only way victims can report incidents to the police because 999 call handlers will only deal with crimes in progress and local police stations have been closed down.
Among those left waiting on the phone to get through to the police was Jenna Murphy (pictured), from Westhoughton, who after an hour and 18 minutes to get through on 101 finally gave up
The figures will fuel accusations that it is almost impossible for victims to persuade many forces to investigate huge swathes of crime – particularly burglaries, car offences and thefts. One MP described the delays as ‘deeply worrying’.
In Lancashire, 36.2 per cent of crime victims gave up before their call was answered from January to October this year. Hampshire saw 32.5 per cent hang up while in Merseyside the figure was 29.6 per cent.
In the West Midlands, 27.7 per cent of exasperated victims – nearly 340,000 people –abandoned their calls before they got through last year, while 146,000, or 20.4 per cent, gave up in the first nine months of 2019.
The longest wait suffered by a caller was a staggering three hours and 58 minutes in the Greater Manchester Police area in July – but the force said this took place while it was ‘implementing a new system’.
The Metropolitan Police said callers waited up to three hours and 19 minutes, while in Essex the maximum was three hours and 13 minutes. West Midlands Police, the second largest force in the country, reported a wait of three hours and ten minutes.
The four forces which reported waits of over two hours were Avon and Somerset, Staffordshire, Cumbria and Merseyside.
The figures obtained by the Daily Mail have shown that four forces in the UK revealed the longest time they took to answer a 101 call was more than three hours
One frustrated caller to Essex Police gave up after hanging on the line for nearly two-and-a-half hours. The figures relate to the longest waits.
Average waiting times were much lower but still hit seven minutes and 13 seconds in Staffordshire, seven minutes and 12 seconds in Cumbria, and five minutes and 17 seconds in Merseyside.
Tory MP Tim Loughton, a former member of the Commons’ home affairs committee, said: ‘This is deeply worrying and goes to reinforce fears that the police are not taking reports of crime seriously.
‘It is also hiding the full scale of crime if victims simply give up trying to get through and never call back.
‘If people cannot get through to speak to a police officer in a reasonable amount of time, how can the public be assured the police are taking crime seriously? Clearly, this needs to be revisited and public confidence restored.’
Some forces offer online reporting systems for non-emergency crimes, but these are unsuitable for many elderly victims.
Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: ‘Calls to the police service both on the emergency 999 system and the non-emergency 101 system have seen significant year-on-year increases in recent years.
‘This increased volume of calls has also combined with increased call handling times. This arises due the complexity of the demands faced by current day policing.
‘Work is ongoing to ensure that public contact will always be adequately resourced, and the emergence of a single online home will mean that, in the future, more non-emergency contact will be offered online, at no cost to access.’
Chief Superintendent Richard Fisher, of West Midlands Police, said: ‘We’ve made significant progress in all areas of 101 call handling, from reducing the amount of time people have to wait to cutting the number of abandoned calls, which happen for a number of reasons.’
Superintendent Mark Kenny, of Greater Manchester Police, said: ‘The 101 non-emergency number receives a large amount of calls on a daily basis and responding to these calls is something we are constantly seeking to improve.’