South Central Ambulance Service is urging the public to call 999 only for life-threatening emergencies, after a 20 per cent surge in emergency calls.

If you don't speak or answer questions, press 55 or tap when prompted and your call will be transferred to the police.

Ofcom is investigating BT and Three over mobile outages it said had caused "UK-wide disruption", including to emergency services. Thousands of Three customers reported they were unable to make calls in June, while BT and EE customers were hit by a similar ...

Call assessors in Stafford and Brierley Hill took 1,510 calls between midnight and 7am on New Years Day – up from 1,386 the previous year. It is the second busiest new year for the service in recent times. Over the two days (December 31 and January 1), the trust took a total of 9,289 calls, slightly down on the 9,965 calls the previous year.

Police have issued a warning after reports of hoax 999 calls being made from a Blackburn phone box. Officers received “multiple reports” of hoax 999 calls from the New Chapel Street phone box. Police are now appealing for information about who could be behind the hoax calls.

The government has announced measures to beef up the resilience of the UK’s 999 emergency call handling system. This comes nine months after communications regulator Ofcom launched an investigation into service operator BT following a UK-wide disruption ...