Today's most viewed
101 line well worth saving, claims county
HAMPSHIRE'S dedicated non-emergency phone number for reporting non-life-threatening incidents is helping in the battle against antisocial behaviour.
The 101 service is now proving to be an important weapon in the fight against vandalism, drunken behaviour, fly-tipping, noise nuisance and other antisocial activities.
In February, the Government decided it would pull the plug on funding for the 101 service and gave the police and local authorities in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight the choice of either footing the bill themselves or axing the non-emergency phoneline. But, to help ensure that the 101 project finances itself for another year, the Home Office gave the consortium known as the Hampshire and Isle of Wight 101 Partnership a one-off £220,000 cash payment.
Since February, 455 calls from Test Valley and Winchester residents have been made using the 101 number.
County council leader, Ken Thornber, said: " The number of calls that have been passed from 101 to our accredited community safety officers since February shows that the service has been widely adopted by the people of Hampshire as an effective method of tackling community safety issues. I am pleased that successful negotiations and work in partnership has meant that alternative funding options have been set up to allow the service to continue and residents across the two counties are able to continue to call the number to report their concerns.
"Hampshire County Council is providing £27,000 to help fund the development work that is being undertaken to allow the continuation of the system until March, 2009, when it is hoped that a longer-term partnership solution will have been established."
8:36am Saturday 10th May 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
