Doug Downing News Today

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Police are warning dog owners to keep their pets under control around livestock as lambing season gets underway.

Police are warning dog owners to keep their pets under control around livestock as lambing season gets underway.

Police are warning dog owners to keep their pets under control around livestock as lambing season gets underway.

A new 999 service which connects sign language users in Wiltshire with an interpreter has been launched.

Wiltshire Police is failing to meet the target of answering 90 per cent of 999 calls within 10 seconds, new data shows.

It takes 16.63 seconds for a call to be answered in Wiltshire Police’s control room on average, according to data collected by BT.

POLICE have seen a surge in 999 and 101 calls since lockdown restrictions ended - and many are hoaxes or non-urgent. Call handlers are often frustrated by time-wasting pranks or reports which should not have been made on the emergency line  and give them less time to deal with actual emergencies. Calls to the 999 service are answered first by BT operators and then passed to the emergency service the caller requests. Demand on the service has been increasing in recent months. The avera...

STAFF at Wiltshire Polices control room will be taking over the forces social media this weekend to share examples of the calls they take. They will be posting advice, stories and facts and figures about call volumes throughout today on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn with the #ClickorCall hashtag. Chief Inspector Doug Downing runs the contact centre. He said: “I think most people would be surprised to see the number of calls we take and, with this being the first weekend post...