Emergency services / ‘Economies of scale’ cited as issue in response to local emergency call centre idea
A SENIOR councillor has resurrected his idea of a local emergency services call centre in Shetland.
Allison Duncan said it was his understanding that a call from Shetland about an incident went to the police control room on the mainland, but the caller was advised it was not a police matter before the operator “hung up”.
He told a meeting of Shetland’s community safety and resilience board on Thursday that the incident may not have happened if the matter had been passed to the local police team in Lerwick.
The Shetland South councillor, who chairs the board, said centralised control centres have had an impact on incidents in the past, but his previous call for a local control room “fell on deaf ears”.
When he raised the matter again on Thursday, local police chief Chris Sewell said he felt it would not be feasible.
A key issue is “economies of scale”, given that call centre IT equipment these days is complex and sophisticated.
Sewell said in contrast, the call handling equipment when he joined the police more than two decades ago was a “relic of the 1970s”.
Now it is a modern, integrated IT system in which calls are recorded, the meeting was told.
Sewell also said call handling is “one of the most scrutinised areas of policing in Scotland”.
The chief inspector referred to an investigation into Police Scotland’s call handling following the deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell following a road accident near Stirling in 2015.
Their vehicle, which had come off the M9, was not discovered for three days after a police control room operator failed to log a 101 call reporting the incident.
Yuill was found dead on arrival, while Bell later died in hospital.
Sewell said there were several recommendations made to Police Scotland regarding call handling following the incident and subsequent investigation.
People should call 999 for emergencies and 101 for non-emergencies. The public can also use an online contact form for non-serious issues.
Phone calls to the police are handled centrally on the Scottish mainland, and the public cannot directly phone the Lerwick station.
Other emergency service calls from Shetland are initially dealt with on the mainland too, but the coastguard has a rescue coordination centre at the Knab in Lerwick which can be contacted.
Duncan last publicly raised the local call centre idea back in 2022 after he said a woman in Lerwick waited nearly an hour after calling 101.
Two years before that he said an elderly lady who had suffered a broken pelvis had to wait for almost four hours for an ambulance to arrive after the initial call was redirected to Edinburgh.
In 2021 the Scottish Ambulance Service said there were no plans to devolve an ambulance control centre to Shetland, but a change in the way calls are assessed had helped to reduce the number of unnecessary journeys ambulances were having to take.
Former councillor Jonathan Wills as well as then MSP Tavish Scott have also been credited with raising the call centre issue many years ago too.
Become a member of Shetland News
Shetland News is asking its readers to consider paying for membership to get additional perks:
- Removal of third-party ads;
- Bookmark posts to read later;
- Exclusive curated weekly newsletter;
- Hide membership messages;
- Comments open for discussion.
If you appreciate what we do and feel strongly about impartial local journalism, then please become a member of Shetland News by either making a single payment, or setting up a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.
Already a member? Sign in to hide this message.
