A fallback automated system for answering 999 calls also failed during an outage of the emergency call service during the summer.
A major incident report into the Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS) failure estimated that it was likely around 120 actual emergency calls had been missed even though more than 200 were logged during the outage.
The higher-than-usual volume of 216 calls during the seventy-two-minute failure was attributed to multiple “test calls” as well as calls from emergency services and other state agencies.
The report also said it seemed likely that some callers would have tried to contact 999 via “multiple means” using different mobiles and landlines.