Massive call volumes handled better

The Independent Review of the NZ Police Communications Centres reached its two-year anniversary in May.

The milestone marked a period of change for the better to the police emergency call handling system, according to National Communications Centres Manager, Superintendent Steve Fitzgerald.

Steve says he’s immensely proud of how far the centres have come in the two years since the review.

“The review panel made 61 recommendations to improve the service offered by the Comms Centres and we prioritised those, moving on the most important ones almost immediately,” he says.

“We’ve been rewarded by huge improvements in the time it takes to answer emergency calls, despite the fact we received the highest number of 111 calls on record last year.”

In 2006, 91 percent of all emergency calls were answered within 10 seconds. This compares to 62 percent in 2004. Nearly every call is answered within 60 seconds.

This has been accomplished against a huge growth in emergency call volumes. In 2001, the three centres received around 400,000 emergency calls.

Last year’s figure totalled almost 630,000 - representing a 50 percent increase in 111 calls.

Wellington-based Central Communications dispatcher Karen Machin -

helping deal with a more than 50 percent increase in 111 calls.