111 CALLS PER YEAR
All 111 calls are answered by Telecom in the first instance. Of the approximately 2.7 million 111 calls Telecom receives every year, only 36% are passed through to emergency services. The rest, 64%, are non-genuine emergency calls including accidental misdials, hang-ups, children playing with the phone and cellphones being bumped in pockets and bags.
Ambulance Calls
Ambulance Communications Centres receive more than 300,000 emergency 111 calls a year. This equates to an average of around 5,800 per week.
In addition, the Ambulance Communications Centres handle calls from GPs and medical alarm monitoring companies for emergency ambulances, calls from ambulance crews, requests for hospital transfers and requests for private ambulances. This takes the total volume of calls received each year to 1.1 million or around 21,200 a week.
More information on ambulance calls
Fire Calls
The three Fire Communications Centres handle around 110,000 emergency calls a year - an average of 2,129 emergency calls a week.
In addition, the Fire Communications Centres handle general and chemical hazard calls and take calls from Fire Alarm providers. These additional calls push the total volume to around 400,000 a year or 7,671 every week.
The number of calls is going up by around 3 to 5% per annum.
Police Calls
The Police Communications Centres handle approximately 700,000 emergency 111 calls a year. This equates to an average of 13,000 a week but because of seasonal variations, this can be as high as 15,000 in peak times.
Emergency calls represent a third of the calls received in the Police Communications Centres. In total, the Centres handle approximately 1.7 million calls a year.
The remaining calls are general inquiries about non-emergencies. This includes 310,000 *555 a year calls from people using cellphones to report poor driver behaviour and other incidents on the road.
In total the Police Communications Centres handle an average of 33,000 emergency, general and *555 calls every week.
The number of calls is going up every year.