Response to report for concern call - Surrey Police, April 2018

On 18 April 2018 at 4.45pm, a woman called 101 to report concerns for her elderly neighbour, whom she had not seen for a week. The call was taken by a call handler based at Surrey Police headquarters. The call handler noted the information provided by the neighbour in the call log and conducted preliminary checks for the welfare of the elderly neighbour.

At 7.50pm a contact centre supervisor (CCS) making routine checks to see which calls needed to be dealt with noticed that this call had been marked as needing police deployment but had not been moved to the Force Control Room (FCR) queue or regraded. As a result, no action had been taken. The CCS made the necessary change on the system. At approximately 9pm, police officers forced entry and found the elderly neighbour barely conscious on the floor. They called an ambulance for assistance.

The entire call was audio recorded and recorded on a log. The call handler and the CCS both provided us with their accounts.

The audio recording and the call log provided evidence that the call handler had conducted all relevant checks and acted in line with their training and policy. However, after the checks were conducted, the call was not marked as needing police deployment by a click of a button. The call handler admitted their mistake and their line manager advised this was a one-off error

Based on the evidence available, we found no indication that the call handler may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings.

After reviewing our report, Surrey Police agreed with our findings.