ONE in 20 calls to the 101 non-emergency telephone call service for Lancashire police are still not being answered before callers hang up.

But this is a big improvement on the one in five going unanswered at the beginning of the summer.

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Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner Clive Grunshaw revealed the figures when he made a report to councillors this week.

He told the county Police and Crime Panel he was concerned about the poor performance of the 101 service since the police aspect was centralised at Hutton Police Headquarters from divisional command centres in December.

The service is supposed to reduce pressure on the main 999 emergency number.

Commissioner Grunshaw said: “Earlier this summer 20 per cent of 101 calls were going unanswered, “That has been reduced to less than five per cent. That is still not good enough.

“This is a key public-facing area where I expect to see an improvement. If we have this number of abandoned calls people will ring 999 instead.”

Tony Harrison, Burnley representative on the panel which supervises the commissioner’s activities, said he rang 101 about an incident outside his Brunshaw home.

He said: “I had waited 25 minutes to try and get through when I abandoned the call. It was too late then.

“I should have rung 999 instead.”

Panel chair and Blackburn with Darwen council leader Kate Hollern said: “I wouldn’t have waited 25 minutes. People will not wait that long and will then ring 999 instead.”

After the meeting Mr Grunshaw said: “Five per cent is better than 10 per cent but we need to get it lower.

“We’ll never get it down to zero. The average time to handle a call is down from two minutes to 40 seconds.”

He told the panel the problems had been caused by 101 handlers declining to move to Hutton leading to a shortage of staff which was now being rectified.

He added there had been extra demand on the 101 service, especially in the evenings, and the change had caused computer problems which Capita were working on improving.

Panel members asked Commissioner Grunshaw to provide a full report on key performance indicators when he attended future meetings so they could better monitor his and the Lancashire police force’s performance.