The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today welcomed a dramatic improvement in the Met’s response to 999 calls following a £2.5m investment from City Hall.
Latest stats show that the Met answered 91 per cent of 999 calls within 10 seconds last month, with an average wait time of seven seconds. This is above the national target of 90 per cent and a dramatic improvement after falling to 57.3 per cent in June 2022.
Waiting times for callers to the 101 non-emergency number have also plummeted with the Met taking steps to quickly assess the needs of the caller and redirect the more than 25 per cent of calls that do not have a policing purpose. This has seen the wait time down from nearly eight minutes in June 2022 to one minute 50 seconds in January this year.
These significant improvements follow a £2.5m investment from City Hall last year to improve the training and resilience of the Met’s Command and Control Centre (MetCC).
The Mayor’s intervention followed the findings of the HMICFRS PEEL inspection, which found that the Met needed to improve how it responds to calls from the public.
The Mayor announced a package of measures last January to support the Met to exit Special Measures as quickly as possible and to accelerate the root and branch reforms and systemic change to the Met’s performance and culture.
Sadiq visited the Met’s Command and Control Centre at Lambeth – which handles more than six million emergency calls and online queries from the public each year – on Thursday to see the improvements that have been made.
Earlier this week, the Mayor announced his intention to invest an additional £151m in policing and crime prevention when he confirmed his final draft budget for 2024-25. This means the Mayor has now more than doubled the annual support for policing and crime prevention since he came to office in 2016. By comparison, the previous Mayor cut the police budget in real terms by 28 per cent in the previous eight years, and over the last 14 years the Government has reduced the Met police budget in real terms by 32 per cent.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “It is vitally important that Londoners receive the very best service when they are in need, so I’m pleased that thanks to our funding, the Met has delivered a significant improvement in their call answering times.
“I’ve been determined to shine a spotlight on the true extent of the performance and cultural problems within the Met and am pleased in the progress that has been made in the call centre. That’s testament to the hard work of the Commissioner, his senior team and particularly the staff and officers in the call centre, who help millions of Londoners each year.
“I will continue to do all I can to support the Met Commissioner to build upon this and deliver the necessary change across the Met as we build a better London for all.”
Marie Heracleous, Director of Business Services at the Met said: “Last month over 90 per cent of 999 calls to the Met were answered within ten seconds. With calls being answered more quickly we can get help to those who urgently need it. It means our officers can respond more quickly to incidents happening in their local community, helping victims of crime and arresting the criminals responsible.
“Our call handlers work around the clock to take calls and help those who need police assistance, where they don’t we will assess the call, and ensure they get the right care that they need.” Photo by U.S. Embassy London, Wikimedia commons.