LIKE all public services, the UK’s Police Force has been under pressure in these times of cuts and austerity. 

While many of us feel safer if we know there are neighbourhood police pounding the streets, the reality is that 25 per cent of cuts means Britain’s police force is scaling back to the extent that at least 22,000 officers will have left the force between now and 2020.

At North Wales Police control room in St Asaph the picture is no different as Deputy Chief Constable Gareth Pritchard explains to me how his force has had to save £24m over the last four years.

“It’s not a case of sending someone to every call anymore,” he says.

“We’ve got a lot less officers so we are not able to just deploy. We have to think about it and assess the vulnerability and the history of the situation and then make a decision about how high a priority it is.”

Spending a few hours in the control room on what you would expect to be a relatively quiet Thursday afternoon is revealing and as we walk around, the various phone operators are dealing with three missing persons cases as a matter of priority.

“At the moment we have three missing persons which are ongoing, including a young child, which we take immediate action on and two other people who have been missing before,” explains DCC Pritchard.

“They are people who we understand have metal health issues and these have to be dealt with sensitively. That’s just the day to day reality in addition to the half a million calls we get per year into this room.”

The issue of mental health problems tends to dominate many of the conversations DCC Pritchard will have with his staff through the course of the day with officers often taking the strain of the equally under pressure NHS and social workers. It soon becomes clear that for long periods of time there isn’t a lot of crime but there’s a lot of upset and vulnerable people. 

“Prioritising each call and understanding the vulnerability of the person involved is what we spend a lot of time doing now,” says DCC Pritchard.

“Less than 20 per cent of the calls we receive are about crime. The highest number are concerns for safety, suspicious circumstances or welfare checks on people. 

“The work has changed and a lot of the issue now is to assess. As call handlers we now take more time over the call because we want to assess the threat and the vulnerability of the individual and prioritise accordingly.”

Brought up in Snowdonia, DCC Pritchard joined North Wales Police in 1984. As a Constable he served in Wrexham town, Corwen and with the Traffic Department at Wrexham before moving to Flintshire as a uniform inspector. It’s fair to say he’s seen a lot.

“We have had to change the skill profile of our staff,” he agrees. 

“Traditionally it was all about crime, public order, shoplifters and fights when I was on the street in Wrexham and Flintshire. It was a very traditional staple diet of police work. 

“Clearly we’ve moved on a lot from that and we are now dealing with 3,000 missing persons a year.”

According to statistics, police spend 14 per cent of their time looking for missing people and the vast majority are found within the first 48 hours. 12 to 17-year-olds constitute the largest group but 80 per cent of adults who go missing will have mental health issues with other factors such as alcohol, drugs, domestic abuse and relationship problems all playing their part. 

“Sometimes we are frustrated with how often we are dealing with so many people with mental health issues,” says DCC Pritchard.

“There are clearly great pressures in the health service and ambulance service but we end up taking casualties to hospital when there are no ambulances available. 

“We have looked in huge detail at how to work with the ambulance service and we have the fire service in the control room with us which has helped us a lot so we are looking at ways to be more efficient, reducing demand and getting the right resource to the situation. 

“If there is a call from social services about a welfare check we will go with social services because it is not just about dealing with the here and now – you want long term planning because no one wants another call from that individual and we are trying to minimize repeat calls just as we are trying to minimize hoax calls.”

Trying to explain why missing persons and mental health have become such big issues for the force, DCC Pritchard is honest in his assessment calling it a “symptom of society”.

“Pressures have increased considerably from my time on the street when there would be one or two missing persons a week and that is down to the complexity of life and the mental health issues which seem to have grown,” he says.

“The NHS seem to be really struggling and we end up dealing with it but sadly we are not the best people to deal with it on many occasions. It is extremely sad and we have people who go missing repeatedly and it is difficult. 

“We seek to make the right decisions and plan our operations carefully so that our approach is correct and if we do use force it is justified. The best way of resolving a situation is through communication.”

One area where the public could help the force and their control room work is reducing the number of non-emergency calls to the 200 staff who work at the centre.

“We need to prioritise this control room on the most urgent cases which involve public safety,” 

says DCC Pritchard.

We need proper use of the 999 system because we do get calls that are just not a policing issue. 

“These can range from calls about getting a taxi to people saying their TV control wont work and other situations which are very bizarre. 

“We’ve lost £24m in the last five years and we have to take some of the hit but we are all about modernising and trying to ensure that we are across communication whether that is on the phone, webchat and social media.”

Despite the many issues, DCC Pritchard remains positive about his staff, the service they provide and policing in North Wales.

The job is great and it’s never boring because there is always the unexpected,” he adds.

“When you are looking for missing children there is always a sense of elation when things go well. 

“Sometimes we deal with tragedy but when we do we are compassionate and professional and we help people when they really need help.

“It’s important that we are a team and that means the people in here and the people out there. 

“We have fantastic people who work all day and all night to solve these situations and some of it is not seen by the public but that’s because we spend a lot of time stopping things happening. That is some of the best work.”