Long Sutton, Sutton Bridge, Holbeach and Crowland councillors criticise the system of reporting crimes to Lincolnshire Police and warn that residents don’t bother making calls

Our area could be missing out on vital police resources - as people are put off from reporting crimes due to a system ‘which is not fit for purpose’.

Fed-up residents in South Holland are not ‘bothering’ to use the 101 phone system to report non-urgent problems to Lincolnshire Police as the waits are so long, district councillors have said.

The phone and online reporting systems came under fire at the district council’s performance monitoring panel meeting after Coun David Wilkinson said he had been warned of 49 minute wait to phone in an incident.

Earlier this year, the cash-strapped force – one of the most underfunded in the country - announced that it was slashing its total of 90 PCSOs to 50. It also raided its reserves to meet a £10million budget black hole.

Coun Wilkinson, who represents Long Sutton, told Wednesday’s meeting: “I had a situation last week and rang 101 and I was 92nd in the queue. It was a waiting time of 49 minutes so I gave up. The perception you get from people is that they don’t bother.”

He later said: “We are one of the most underfunded police forces. We need funding to be in line with other forces.

“The police work incredibly hard. What have all the MPs in Lincolnshire done?”

Sutton Bridge ward member Coun Chris Brewis has long been calling for Lincolnshire to receive fairer funding – and warned that police allocate officers to areas with high rates of crime.

He said: “Too many of our things are ruled from the middle of London. I have met our new PCSOs. They now have a vast area to cover. They have half of the district to cover and that is the route of the problem - we have not get enough police.

“The police resources allocated to the area depend on the the amount of incidents of crime. I haven’t rung the police for a long time, I now go back to the old fashioned route of writing letters.”

Committee chairman Coun Bryan Alcock said reporting crime needs to be made easy for people.

He said: “People are not going to sit on the phone to report a crime - the system is not fit for purpose.

“18 months ago we were promised that a new system was in the pipeline all I can say is it’s a hell of a long pipeline.”

Making the online system more accessible was also highlighted by Holbeach councillor Sophie Hutchinson.

She said: “The online reporting system really needs improvement. You can’t submit evidence and you get a email back saying they are not going to deal with it.”

Reacting to the comments made at the meeting, Lincolnshire Police said that the demand on its emergency lines has doubled in a decade - partly due to gaps in the provision of other public services. It also said it has increased its number of call handlers.

Mike Modder-Fitch, Head of Operations for the Force Control Room said: “Nationally we are consistently sitting in the top five of all UK forces for our Emergency (999) response times.

“We have made a conscious decision as a force to ensure that when someone is at risk of serious harm we are able to respond appropriately to support the chief’s vision of making Lincolnshire the safest place to live, work and visit.

“That said, demand on our emergency lines has almost doubled in the last 10 years as people have engaged with policing to cover gaps that exist within other service providers. In addition to this call complexity has grown meaning call lengths are also almost double the length they were back in 2012.

“This is a picture that is reflected nationally and the impact of this additional pressure is that response times on 101 have not always met the standards we aim for.

As part of a review completed in 2022 as part of the return of services from G4S, it was agreed in December 2022 to increase the establishment of call handlers from 75 to 90. Due to the robust, recruitment, vetting and training process it takes about nine months from that decision being made to get call handlers in and taking calls on their own and as a result we have been working all year to increase the overall headcount to this increased number.

“As we have done this, we have started to see average wait times on 101 start to decrease and year to date around 52% of all calls are answered within three minutes, and around 71% are answered within ten mins.

“Our most recent intake that started in July have just come out of the classroom and entered their tutoring phase, which has taken our establishment up to 91 call handlers.

“We expect them to be fully up to speed by the end of December which we hope should further reduce average wait times.

“We are currently also reviewing the options you are presented with when you call the automated service as we have had some feedback that this can sometimes be complicated to navigate and we want to make this more user friendly.

“In terms of the online crime reporting system, this is a national product and something we have little control over. Whilst we can take comments on board and feed back into the product team, we do not have the ability to make changes to the way in which it works.”

What do you think? Are councillors right to say the public is giving up on calling the police? Do you sympathise with police for having to pick up where other services cannot help people? Post your comments below or email victoria.fear@iliffepublishing.co.uk