POLICE have pledged to beat problems at their year-old call centre, after an 80-year-old woman claimed she got tired of waiting to report a crime.

The woman, from Darwen, who does not want to be named, was attempting to report an incident in which some children had been intimidating her in what she called 'pensioner bashing.'

But she said she gave up trying after half an hour in frustration at being passed from station to station.

She called the Darwen police 01254 701777 number and was re-routed to the centralised communications room in Blackburn, which covers the whole of the Eastern Division. In this procedure, an operator takes details of the complaint and passes it to the relevant local police officer.

The woman said that the police had always been helpful to her, but claimed it was too difficult making first contact.

The police acknowledged teething problems at their call centre, but said that it could take longer to get through when there were a number of major incidents, because 999 calls get priority.

Also, they said people hang up, then redial, which means they are placed at the back of the queue. And they said that operators were still getting to grips with understanding the geography of a wide area, which could lengthen call duration.

They are certain it will improve as staff and callers become more familiar with the system.

This centre was designed to make the police more accessible by eradicating the engaged tone that could come from a station and placing the caller in a queue.

And even though there may be a wait, the call would be answered, rather than just being engaged.

The aim is to answer all emergency calls within 15 seconds but the target for all others is simply as quickly as is possible. The Lancashire Evening Telegraph tested the number on four occasions yesterday -- at noon it took 15 seconds to answer, at 1pm it took 70 seconds, at 2pm it took 105 seconds, then at 3pm the response time was 130 seconds.

Chief Inspector Mick Gledhill, who has responsibility for the control room, said: "We receive 2,000 calls per day into the control room and, of course, we won't please everybody.

"We are in a time of constant change but we always maintain to give a high quality of service to the public. It's a new room and we've a number of new staff who will only get better. We've seen signs of improvements recently, but we would say to give it another year and it will be a lot better and the staff will be more settled and confident in their work."

He added that the new radio system, which means officers can communicate with each other without going through the communications centre, would free-up operators and increase response time.

The woman who complained said: "When you ring 701777 it takes at least 20 minutes to get an answer, but that gets through to Blackburn, even though it's a Darwen number," she said.

"Then you ask to be put through to Darwen and that takes another 10 minutes. I got fed up and put the receiver down. "You don't phone the police for a chat and you can't call 999 because it's not an emergency.

"Some time ago, a sergeant gave me a special number, but I am only to use that in an emergency -- I rung it and they said why are you ringing this, call 701777.

"I said you can't get through on that, but then she put me through to it anyway.

"The police should be more accessible -- when you phone you should get through to Darwen, not Blackburn.

"There were some children intimidating me on purpose. It's called pensioner bashing.

"It has been going on for a while and the police have been good at dealing with it when you can get through."