PROBLEMS in North Yorkshire Police's force control room are being tackled by reducing the amount of admin staff have to carry out.

Figures released this week showed the average time taken to answer 999 calls was 19 seconds, with just 53.4 per cent answered within the target of 10 seconds.

The figures also showed an average waiting time of more than four minutes when callers tried to get through to North Yorkshire Police's 101 number, with 32 per cent of non-emergency calls being abandoned before they were answered.

The FCR has also been hit with ongoing IT problems which has led police to urge the public NOT to phone the non-emergency number on several occasions in recent months, as well as an increased number of calls received - as part of a national trend.

Assistant Chief Constable Phil Cain said FCRs around the country faced "challenging times", with the number of calls made rising by 25 per cent in recent months.

Mr Cain said: "What we do know is that 13 per cent of our calls over the last year are for other agencies or about non-policing matters, and unfortunately we do still receive many calls that should never come to the police."

He pointed out that new call handlers and switchboard operators were being recruited by the force, but as The Press reported last week, the latest recruits will not begin work until next year.

Switchboard operators are also being introduced "to direct calls to the right place", and some administrative tasks are being moved out of the FCR to the Crime Management Unit from early next month, "so that operators can really focus on speaking to the public".

On the IT problems which had plagued the FCR, Mr Cain said the issue had now been identified and resolved.

He said: "During an upgrade designed to make our systems work faster and handle a greater number of calls we discovered a software bug that had not shown up during testing. This caused issues in the Force Control Room for two separate one hour periods.

"We are now working very closely with our software provider to make sure that we don’t experience the same issue in the future, and at this point in time we are not expecting the problem to reoccur."

Mr Cain said the public should be reassured "that they can contact us with confidence", and though the FCR is receiving more calls than ever, "we will answer and deal with every call".