The strain on ambulance and fire services highlights the issue the 101 service faces - Dr Alan Billings

I have tried to explain the growing demand on the service and members of the public have wanted to talk about how long they waited to get through.

One former Rotherham councillor told me he could ‘solve the problem’ because it was just a matter of getting the IT right and he had a background in technology. I knew it couldn’t just be about the technology; or it would have been fixed.

But over recent weeks, when 101 has come up, the conversations have taken a different turn.

There has been a greater willingness to step back and think about what is happening with a bit more understanding. The reason seems to be because of what has been happening of late with calls to other services, principally Ambulance and Fire and Rescue. As long as people could ring for an ambulance or a fire tender and one turned up in a reasonable time, 101 could seem as if the police were just inefficient.

Why can’t you be like the Ambulance Service or Fire and Rescue? But recently, we have seen both of these other services buckle and the public has realised that demand can rise to the point where the call centre and the available resources simply cannot cope. It has little or nothing to do with how efficient the technology or call handling service is – though you do need continuing investment in the IT.

A few weeks ago, when temperatures in South Yorkshire soared into the high 30s and there were outbreaks of fire in multiple places across the county, we saw something we had never seen before: many people were dialling for help at the same time, overwhelming the call handlers, and there were insufficient fire tenders to go to every place.

Across the country, fields, trees and crops, and in some cases properties, were left to burn as incidents were triaged for seriousness and risk to life. If we hadn’t realised before, now we did: fire officers were a finite resource and could not be everywhere.

Similarly with the Ambulance service. The crisis in the NHS has created situations that only a few years ago would have been unthinkable.

Demand for ambulances has gone up and as a result emergency calls using 999 have not been answered as quickly as we expected; ambulances might not turn up for hours.

In Cornwall, one 90-year-old woman waited 40 hours in considerable distress. Ambulance crews who would normally deal with eight or nine patients on a typical shift were reduced to two or three because they were spending so much time queuing outside A&E departments.

The people I have been speaking to recently – in Sheffield and the Don Valley – have realised that 101 faces something similar. There are days and times of day when demand can be overwhelming and even if the number of call handlers were doubled or trebled or quadrupled to answer every single call at any time of day or night within a few minutes, there would not be enough police officers to deal with each incident reported.

Again, there would have to be some triaging and some assessment about threat, harm and risk. Just as some fields might be left to burn or a patient might not be seen for 40 hours, while some incidents of anti-social behaviour or crime might get a swift response, others might not be dealt with as quickly as any of us might want. That is as frustrating for the police as it is for the public.

We need a bigger, national conversation about the ever-rising demand on the police service (and ambulance) and then swift action about how we deal with it going forward.

This is not happening at the moment because the Government has descended into a kind of catalepsy as we wait for a new Prime Minister. But it has to happen after that and with an urgency that is currently lacking.

I met members of Tickhill Town Council last week and we had a good conversation about a number of issues they face there. Tickhill is a very pleasant, small town which does not have high levels of either crime or anti-social behaviour – though if you live in a road that has suffered a burglary or a spate of quad bikes that may not be how it feels.

There are hot spots of crime which could take up all police officer time and attention because of the heavy demand; but that would not be fair on places like Tickhill.

A shortened version of the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire’s latest blog post.