Non-emergency hotline brought back

by Press Association on March 2, 2010

A scrapped non-emergency police phone number will be brought back in England and Wales to enable reports of drunken or rowdy behaviour and dangerous driving.

The 101 number, being reinstated from March 2012 with 10p calls, was a Labour manifesto commitment in 2005, but trial funding in South Wales, Hampshire, Northumbria, Sheffield and Leicester was halted in November 2007.

Two-thirds of calls, such as a request for help to test smoke alarms and a query on the time of a bus to Southampton, were found to be “not appropriate”.

But the number has now appeared in the Home Office’s Safe and Confident Neighbourhood Strategy and Home Secretary Alan Johnson said it would allow easier reporting of anti-social behaviour and crimes that did not need an emergency 999 call.

Neighbourhood officer contact details and other advice will also be available through the hotline, said the Home Office report.

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