CALLERS were unable to get through to one of North Yorkshire Police's main switchboards when its telephone system was plunged into "chaos" at the weekend.

Police said they had experienced "major problems" yesterday morning because phones were out of action at the force control room at Newby Wiske, Northallerton - one of the force's two main hubs of communication.

A serious power supply problem at the control room shut down all of its communication and computer systems, and callers, including 999 callers, would have had to face longer waits for a response.

Operators at the force's other main control room, in York, had to take over the handling of all the force's calls and the management of all incidents across the county.

Engineers were called to the site to work on the problem, which started at about 8.30am.

At one stage, plans were in place to bus operators down from the Newby Wiske control room to York to bolster the six operators there who were trying to deal with the increased volume of calls.

Sergeant Sarah Priestley, supervisor at the force control room in York, said yesterday: "We have had major problems with our communications this morning. The phones have been disabled and, as such, it has caused quite a lot of chaos with members of the public trying to get through. We can only apologise for this problem."

She said today: "The problem at the Newby Wiske control room had a knock-on effect on every form of communication (including 999 calls). The queues of calls were increased because people were having to wait to get through because of the reduced number of operators."

BT engineers managed to remedy the problem and the stricken control room's systems were back on line at 12.30pm.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "The cause of the problem has now been established and we have instructed BT, as a priority, to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Updated: 11:36 Monday, August 19, 2002