MORE than a fifth of calls to North Yorkshire Police's non-emergency number are abandoned before they are answered.

Figures released this week showed there were 139,776 calls to the 101 service in the first six months of 2017, but an average of 21.44 per cent of callers hung up before their call was answered.

This year's figures were slightly higher than in the same period last year, which saw 137,054 calls to 101, and 14.12 per cent of calls were abandoned before they could be answered.

The figures were released under a Freedom Of Information Act request attempting to find out how many 999 calls had been abandoned, but the force said this was not possible to answer.

A police spokeswoman said: "No 999 calls are recorded by North Yorkshire Police as being abandoned before they are answered by the force. 999 calls are managed by BT until they are answered by the police, fire or ambulance service.

"All forces are required to provide three lines for 999 calls as a back-up and if, for any reason - such as a fault or high demand - a 999 call cannot be taken on our primary line, it is transferred to a secondary line, then an alternate line. If the call still cannot be answered, we have the option to transfer it to our call handling 'buddy' force. Likewise, we handle calls for other forces if they are in a similar position. During June 2017, 102 calls out of 33,191 were routed to the secondary line."

The figures showed 60 per cent of 999 calls in August this year were answered within four seconds, faster than 11 seconds in 2016 and six seconds in 2015. The average answer time was 17 seconds.

The spokeswoman said "there is no doubt that demand has increased", and the force still had to deal with nuisance and hoax calls, including "asking us to pick a friend’s 'stuff' up because she had gone into hospital, directions to a hotel, and telling us that the Godfather is buried in Rome".

She said: "999 is a priority and this has a knock-on effect on non-emergency calls, resulting in 29 per cent being abandoned during August, however, this is expected to improve following a number of changes in the control room, including the recent introduction of a call-back facility if a caller does not wish to wait, and an operator function for general enquiries."