IN the most challenging of public arenas, Paul Garvin was nothing if not brutally honest and open.

He arrived at Darlington Town Hall with borough council leader John Williams' condemnation of the force's "lamentable" response times ringing in his ears.

All councillors were invited to Tuesday night's meeting to voice their concerns about the force's service to the public.

Far from fobbing off their questions, Mr Garvin conceded that the new communications centre in Bishop Auckland had suffered its fair share of setbacks.

Grilled about incidents in Darlington, Mr Garvin was equally forthright.

"Many of these incidents have gone wrong because our cops in Darlington have not been doing the jobs they should have been doing in the right way," he said.

Such a statement was typical of his honesty throughout the evening and won him glowing praise from councillors.

But the chief constable also went out of his way to stress that the "horror stories" reported in the media were only a small fraction of the overall operation.

Durham Police handle 88,000 calls a month and deal with 18,000 incidents, he said.

"In relation to communications, we are getting 12 letters of complaint per month but we are also getting four letters of appreciation per month," he said.

"We have been increasing the number of switchboard staff to handle the number of calls coming in."

Last December, before the re-organisation, he said there were 11,200 calls a month made to Darlington police. The average time to answer a call was 13.4 seconds.

Mr Garvin said: "Of those calls, 21 per cent were not answered. So, when people say now they can't get an answer from police, in December last year there were 2,400 calls not being picked up in Darlington."

Last month, 14,000 calls were received on behalf of Darlington police - and 14,000 were answered, he said.

Questioned about how swiftly the technical problems could be resolved, Mr Garvin said: "I don't care what it costs, we want it fixed and we want it fixed yesterday."

A new system, providing operators with additional background information when a call is received - to allow for quicker deployment of officers - is due to be installed.

A helpdesk for people wanting advice has also been established, staff will soon be working longer hours and Durham Police will eventually switch to a single phone number - 0845 6060 365.

Parts of the centre are to be split to enable greater focus to be placed on individual areas, such as Darlington, Sedgefield and the Wear Valley.

Mr Garvin said: "In terms of a full Rolls Royce, cooking-on-gas system, we are looking at early summer next year.

"Between now and then, we are doing everything we can to ensure we have sufficient staff, properly trained and properly supported."

Councillor Doris Jones, representing Middleton St George, said youth workers being attacked in the village earlier this week had called for aid, only to be put through to Cleveland Police.

"It is a call centre when all is said and done," she said. "If an insurance company or a bank can set up a call centre to handle calls quickly, I don't see why the police can't do the same."

But Mr Garvin replied: "The police business is not a call centre - you can't just follow a screen. They are dealing with life and death situations."

Yesterday, Coun Williams praised Mr Garvin for his frank and open presentation.