Nottinghamshire Police has redeployed officers into its control room and approved recruitment of ten additional emergency call handlers after rising demand affected call-answering performance.
The force received 256,319 calls to 999 in the year to June 2026, an increase of 9.1% on the previous year.
A performance report covering the period to the end of June says emergency call volumes increased particularly sharply from January. Growth was greater than that experienced by any other force in the region or the group of similar forces used for comparison.
The report says analysis has not identified a single cause, although calls relating to crime and requests for incident updates have increased.
In the three months to June, an average of 87.7% of 999 calls were answered within ten seconds, below the 90% target. This was down two percentage points on the previous quarter and 3.6 percentage points on the equivalent measure a year earlier.
The proportion of abandoned 101 calls also increased as resources were prioritised for emergencies.
The report records a 5% abandonment rate for the non-emergency service, up from 1.6% a year earlier. The force received 603,232 calls to 101 over the year, a slight decrease of 0.2%.
Measures introduced to address the pressure include enhanced overtime for emergency call handlers, redeployment of police officers into the control room and approval to recruit ten additional call handlers.
The next training intake has also been expanded from eight recruits to 16, alongside faster recruitment processes and campaigns encouraging appropriate use of 999 and greater use of online reporting.
The report also sets out performance in attending urgent incidents.
Across the force area, 72.5% of Grade 1 incidents were attended within the relevant response target, an improvement of 1.2 percentage points on the previous quarter.
However, there remained a gap between urban and rural areas. In urban areas, 74.1% were attended within target, compared with 68.5% in rural areas.
Both figures were slightly below their positions a year earlier, despite the improvement in the combined measure.
The report says the scale of increased emergency demand has contributed to the decline in call-answering performance, with the staffing measures intended to improve resilience and support recovery.
