A COMPUTER centre which handles hundreds of daily police calls in East Lancashire took another step towards becoming fully operational this week.

The centre has already been handling calls for Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley and this week the Blackburn area came on line.

The calls centre at Blackburn police station will handle all the telephone calls for the surrounding area when Darwen is added later this year.

The police's Eastern Division is following in the footsteps of other divisions across Lancashire and is centralising its communications network.

Around 70 staff will monitor calls and decide whether officers need to be sent out to deal with incidents and emergencies.

Chief Inspector Andy Pratt said: "Every day we we deal with a phenomenal amount of calls ranging from real emergencies to people wanting to know the time of the last bus back to Preston.

"This system is designed to deal with every emergency as quickly as possible. We want to make sure that our resources are deployed in the best way possible." Operators can use the latest equipment to locate where a call is coming from and dispatch the nearest available officer.

The in-built maps mean officers on patrol can be sent to an emergency incident as soon as possible and know exactly which route to take.

Chief Inspector Pratt added: "We do have some people who ring the police on a regular basis and they find it hard to understand why Accrington's communications network is now based in Blackburn.

"But this new system is far more efficient and not only saves time but also enables us to deal with an emergency far more efficiently."

The new system has been designed so that it can be dismantled and moved to the planned new police headquarters in Whitebirk.