Lincolnshire Police report record month for calls in June

Lincolnshire Police have blamed an Android smart-phone issue for the fact that June was their busiest month ever for 999 calls, with an average of 110 abandoned or silent calls per day.

This figure is more than double the usual average, and resulted in a record 13,713 calls to 999.

The previous record for the highest number of 999 calls in a month was in August 2022, with 12,972 calls. In June last year, the force received 10,933 calls, marking it as the busiest June on record until this year.

A force spokesperson explained: “Nationally, Emergency (999) demand has been increasing around 10% year on year for the last ten years so this is not an issue unique to Lincolnshire Police.”

“However, the main driver of this particularly high demand has been linked to the Android issues that have been well documented causing an exceptionally high number of abandoned / silent 999 calls.

“In June alone we were averaging around 110 abandoned / silent 999 calls per day, which is up from around an average of 50 per day earlier in the year.”

Of the total calls received in June, approximately 8,000 were classified as urgent or priority incidents.

The remaining calls were a mixture of routine and non-attendance graded jobs. This includes multiple reports for the same incident, additional information regarding media appeals, or calls for non-policing matters.

An Android patch released in early July is expected to have addressed this issue.

The summer period is also typically busy as Lincolnshire sees an increase in visitors. There tends to be more calls involving domestic abuse, violence and missing people.

The public are urged to consider if the police are the right service to contact, and if 999 is the appropriate way to get in touch.

“For everything else you should call 101 or go online to report. If you do inadvertently have your phone call 999 in error, please stay on the line,” police advice says.

“We have to complete a number of resource-intensive tasks to reassure ourselves that our attendance is not needed – if you stay on the line we can complete these much quicker and get to those that really need us.”