Day in the life of an emergency Call Handler

Cambridgeshire Police are celebrating #ControlRoomWeek 2023, which is an annual event designed to celebrate the often unsung work of control room staff across the country.

As part of the campaign, Chelsea Calver will be giving us a glimpse into what an average shift looks like for her as an emergency call handler for the constabulary.

“My designated role for the evening was the emergency line (999). As a call handler, in between the emergency calls coming in (because they are not constant), we raise crimes and incidents that members of the public have reported to us via online forms on our website.

“When I arrived to work at 20.40, there were 10 crimes/incidents to raise in the mailbox. I had my headset on ready to take any incoming 999 calls, but filled my time in between with the outstanding online reports.

“My shift began at 9pm but at 8:57pm an incoming 999 call came in where a man was reporting a potential burglary in progress. I took all the necessary details, and graded the call as ‘immediate’ which meant officers would be dispatched to assist the man ASAP.

“Over the course of the next hour, I raised six crimes that had come in through our online report forms. One report was about a child having no seatbelt on, to which I logged an incident and carried out checks on both the vehicle and the suspect.

“Another report was for suspected fraud. I redirected the man to Action Fraud, texting him a link to their website and their phone number as this is a more appropriate way of reporting fraud.  

“There were also two reports of bullying / harassment in schools in the mailbox, to which I logged the incidents, conducted checks on all of the names given, and also asked the informant to call in so we could take some further details from them and ensure all the appropriate safeguarding measures are in place.

“The next two online reports were about nuisance neighbours / antisocial behaviour to which I logged the incidents and checked for any similar reports in the area.

“By this point I was an hour and a quarter into my shift, when some more 999 calls came in.

“This call was from a female who had already called us about her neighbours who were amidst a domestic incident. She was calling to provide an update so I located the live incident, made the appropriate updates to our records and made officers aware.

“The next call was a woman reporting a medical emergency. She started to share concerns for daughter and then the line cleared. We have a duty of care to ensure the caller is safe, so I called informant back to check on the situation. I also logged an incident on our system, checked the phone number and address on multiple different systems to see if anything like this had happened previously. I also called the ambulance service to see if they have had a call from the same number.

“The next 999 call was from a man who stated that a car had tried to run him over. I told the caller to ring us back on 101 after risk assessing the situation. I learnt that he was in a safe place, he was not injured, this incident was not live / in progress and the suspect was not on scene or known to him, which rendered it a non-emergency. He agreed to phone back on 101 so the incident could be logged there instead.

“About 40 minutes later, the same male called again reporting the same thing. I reminded him of my previous advice and then conducted some searches on his phone number. It turns out that this caller is well known to us for making multiple calls to 999 and 101. Notes were added to his file on our system.

“The next 999 call was from a lorry driver who stated that the back of his lorry was being accessed by unknown suspects whilst he was in the front cab. I reassured the informant and sent for immediate dispatch, whilst making multiple checks on the informant’s vehicle.