South Yorkshire Police has switched on a new artificial intelligence tool designed to speed up the process of reporting crime and cut down the clutter on its 101 non-emergency line caused by calls that are misdirected, a nuisance, or plain pranks.
The technology, which uses natural language processing, went live across the force this morning.
The 101 service fields around 20 million calls a year nationally, and roughly one in five of those — some four million calls — turn out to be intended for a completely different organisation, from local councils to NHS 111 or the power network’s 105 helpline.
Alongside these misdirected calls, handlers also regularly field far less pressing requests, including reports of late pizza deliveries, slow service at the bar, or callers simply after a lift somewhere.
Under the old system, these calls could only be spotted once a real person had already picked up the phone — wasting the caller’s own time as well as pushing back the wait for people who have a genuine emergency or crime to report.
Faster responses
The new AI tool listens for the reason behind a call and, where it recognises the issue isn’t a policing matter, redirects the caller to the right service before they even join the queue, freeing handlers to respond faster when someone has a real crime, safeguarding issue or emergency to report.
The system was built jointly by the Home Office, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Vodafone, and has gone through rigorous training and testing to check its accuracy holds up across different accents and ways of phrasing a request, rather than working reliably for only some callers.
Crime and Policing Minister Sarah Jones said: “Police call handlers are wasting hours fielding calls meant for other organisations. Every minute spent on these calls is time taken away from helping people who genuinely need their support. AI is already helping police catch dangerous criminals and speed up investigations.
“Now, it will help bring control rooms into the 21st century, freeing up time and unlocking millions of pounds. Forces can reinvest those savings into tackling the crime on our streets.”
