MORE staff are to be recruited at police operations rooms to deal with the rise in calls from members of the public.

The staffing levels will rise by 65 at four area operations covering Greater Manchester Police area, including Leigh.

Calls last year rose by 25 percent more than was expected, with half a million emergency calls alone being dealt with by the Force.

However, the 999 service performance rate dropped from 94.1% in 1995-06 to only 77.9% last year when it came to answering calls within 15 seconds.

Cllr Stephen Murphy, Chairman of the Police Authority, said: "Obviously we are disappointed that performance on something as important as 999 calls has dipped, but we have to allow for the change from divisional control rooms to four operations rooms halfway through the year.

"It was a massive project that was delivered to budget and on time but there were initial problems which are being resolved. Certainly we will be keeping a close eye on performance this year, monitoring the figures on a regular basis, and the Chief Constable assures us performance will improve."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.