Council saves money answering 101 calls

Sheffield Council has saved £50,000 by dealing with phone calls to the 101 service, rather than outsourcing them to the police.
Sheffield Town HallSheffield Town Hall
Sheffield Town Hall

The council’s customer services department created an out-of-hours contact centre on Manor Lane for tenants with emergency repairs and lift problems.

Following its success, the council decided to take over some of the calls being dealt with by South Yorkshire Police’s 101 service. These included calls about homelessness, vulnerable adults and children and anti-social behaviour on council property.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A report to councillors says: “This insource was effective from February 1 and to date on average 96 percent of all calls have been answered, against a key performance indicator of 85 percent. Feedback about the service has been very positive.

“The service is being delivered for £50,000 per annum less than the sum being paid to South Yorkshire Police for taking these calls.

“Customer Services plan to speak with other services about whether they could benefit from having out of hours calls taken by the contact centre.”

The Overview and Scrutiny committee will discuss this at a meeting on Thursday, April 19.