WORK remains ongoing to improve the length of time it takes to get through to the non-emergency number at North Yorkshire Police - which had seen large numbers of abandoned calls.

North Yorkshire Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Will Naylor told the county’s police and crime panel additional Force Control Room staff were being trained and would be ready to start work ahead of an expected spike in calls over the summer.

The drive to bolster the team answering calls follows the force seeing more than 100 calls a day being abandoned as control room staff struggled with demand.

The average time taken to answer a 101 call fell from three minutes, 35 seconds last August to one minute, six seconds in February.

While 23.1 per cent of calls to the non-emergency number were abandoned in October, this fell to 7.5 per cent in February.

Members of the panel meeting at County Hall, Northallerton, told Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan they were reassured she had responded with an investment in a new control room, 32 new full-time staff, state-of-the-art IT equipment and new training and tutoring facilities.

Mr Naylor added: “While February’s figures were good, March went slightly back up again for call waiting times, mainly due to the snow. There were 50 accidents in four hours one morning.”