The Durham police force is to recruit extra staff to handle peak-time calls from the public. Two communication centres in Aykley Heads and Bishop Auckland deal with more than 500,000 non-emergency and almost 80,000 emergency calls a year.
Non-emergency calls have to be passed on to specialist call handlers to determine priority and there can be peak-time surges in demand.
Now 32 extra staff are to be added to the 160 currently employed.
'Public frustration'
Head of communications, Supt Barry Knevitt, said critical surges in public demand were often between 1800 BST and 2200 BST, with more than a third of the callers worried about anti-social behaviour and disorder.
He said: "If the switchboard has 10 calls holding and just five call handlers available you have the ingredients for creating public frustration.
"It's all about striking a balance to make sure we provide as good a quality of service that we can."
The first new recruits are expected to take up their posts in the summer and should be fully operational by early autumn.
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