LAST month North Yorkshire Police handled 38,341 calls across their control room and 9,572 of those calls were 999, the highest volume than any previous August.

Police say that during the busiest week, the force received 8,971 calls from August 1 to August 7.

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45 per cent of all 999 calls were answered within five-seconds and 50 per cent were answered within 10 seconds.

The police received 14,395 “101” calls which lasted an average of 9 minutes and 15 seconds and there was a further 4,211 calls where the caller had requested a call back to save them hanging on to the phone.

According to police it has been a busy month across the country due to changes in the Covid restrictions, however, the number of calls is reducing and the waiting times are becoming shorter.

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Police have issued new advice stating that the public can use the force’s website to contact them instead of using 101.

If the public are reporting a non-emergency crime, road traffic incident, fraud or anti-social behaviour, they can use their local police website and click the “report it” tab.

North Yorkshire Police’s Superintendent of Customer Contact, Jason Dickson, said: “Many people don’t realise that behind every 999 and 101 call in North Yorkshire, is a dedicated team of people answering those calls and now online reports through our website, 24 hours a day.

“So, regardless if you call 101 or use our website to contact us, your report will be dealt with in the same way.

“Going online not only saves you having to wait in the 101 queue, which we know can sometimes be very busy, it also helps to keep our phones lines free for emergencies.

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“The last thing we want is for our communities to have to wait in long queues to speak to us about non-emergency crimes and to provide information, so if you have access to the internet and if you need to contact us on 101, please consider using our website to see if your report, information or question can be dealt with much quicker – just visit www.northyorkshire.police.uk.”

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