Another day goes by and another broken manifesto pledge occurs. It's taken a little while to get there with this one but the Government has finally bitten the bullet it seems. In 2005 the Labour Manifesto said this"Not all problems need a 999 response, so a single phone numberThe Government pressed ahead after the election launching phase one of the project known as 101. Phase One's official start up and set-up cost was £7.47 million, although other money has been spent by Police forces preparing for phase two so the overall figure is certainly higher.
staffed by police, local councils and other local services will be available across the country to deal with anti-social behaviour and other non-emergency problems."
The first signs of problems for the project came just over a year ago when the Telegraph revealed a leaked email that suggested the Government was quietly shelving the service. The Government responded saying it was still under review, and that review appears to have come to an end with the five trial areas being told that their funding will end in March.
How many more manifesto pledges will end in failure with millions of pounds wasted I wonder?
1 comment:
Nah, this was a failure because it was to be chargeable to the end user, which led to a lot of complaints.
Effectively, we were to dial 101 and pay 10p per call, and then be referred to 999 if the operator decided it was an emergency.
People were unhappy with the concept that we would effectively be losing free emergency calls.
On a side note, I happen to have the numbers for my local police, ambulance, fire service and coastguard and use those numbers if I need to call them and decide for myself if it's an emergency... I've called the fire service once, the police several times and the coastguard once. Possibly the fact that you generally call ambulances for real emergencies and just trek to the A&E otherwise is the reason.
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