Contacting Northamptonshire Police in South Northants

999

For a crime or incident in progress, or where someone is immediately at risk of harm, you should always dial 999. You will not be criticised for a well-intentioned 999 call. Furthermore, if we think the call doesn’t warrant occupying an emergency line, we’ll ring you back on a non-emergency line as we try to keep the emergency lines clear.

Your call will first be answered by the Emergency Operator who will ask you which of the emergency services you need (ie, fire, police or ambulance). When you say it is the police you want, your call will be routed to the nearest and most available police emergency line. In most cases, this will be the Northamptonshire Police control room. In some cases, where lots of 999 calls are being received at the same time, or where you live near a county border, the call can be redirected to the nearest police force which will take your details and pass to Northamptonshire immediately.

When the police operator answers, you will be asked to say what the emergency is. Please be prepared to give your details and the exact location of where the police are needed. Remember that the operator may not know the location as well as you. Think about how to describe it best, giving landmarks if possible – especially for rural locations or where house numbering may not be obvious.

101

This is the number that has been introduced nationally so that people don’t have to know the individual telephone number of each of the 40+ police forces. The Northamptonshire Police telephone number is 03000 111222 but you don’t need to remember that, because if you dial 101, the system will ask you to confirm which police force you want connecting to, and then connect you to the 03000 111222 number for Northamptonshire requests.

101 will connect you in the same way as the 03000 number. After the Chief Constable’s recorded welcome, you follow a brief set of scripts where you can either report an incident, or give the name of the person or department you want to speak to. The system has voice recognition to assist.

Most of the 999 and 101 calls will be attended by our response teams – we always prioritise calls where people (as opposed to property) are at risk of harm, which may explain why other calls attract waiting times. Some calls do not receive a response from an officer, and we may set up an appointment to come and see you.

The public tell us that one of their biggest frustrations, in being able to get through to police, is when there is not an immediate incident ongoing, or when you just want some advice from your local officer when next available. In the old days, you might have visited your police station or local office to obtain this.

Much of this business can be handled by my officers on the community team. Community teams are smaller in numbers, but have the skills to know about and deal with the ongoing issues that are local to the neighbourhood. You may know your local officers (details as at January 2017 are below) but if you don’t, we offer the following advice.

South Northants community teams still operate from the police stations in St James Road, Brackley and Watling Street, Towcester. The response team is currently based at Towcester Police Station and provides 24/7 coverage for the whole of South Northants.

Brackley and Towcester Police Stations no longer have front offices for the public to visit. These closures have long led to the myth that the sectors are also not staffed by Police.

Daventry Police Station still has an active front office and its opening hours are set to match demand. These are Mon-Sat 10am to 4pm. The front office team can be contacted via 101 on extension 341010. The team there have access to community team officer duties, are helpful and well-trained to assist and advise. They can also arrange for your local officer to contact you by simply identifying the officer and emailing them.

Alternatively you can email any concerns or queries (not crimes or urgent incidents) directly to the team that cover your area. An email to the generic team address can then be picked up by any team member and passed to the most appropriate person to deal with the matter. This avoids delays when individual officers are off duty. The email address for Wicken residents is:

NeighbourhoodTeamSouthNorthants-Towcester@northants.police.uk

Your Local Policing Team

- Based at Brackley, with South Northants district-wide supervisory responsibility:

Sergeant Michaela Simons micki.simons@northants.police.uk

- Rural Intervention Vehicle based in South Northants – Police & Fire collaboration

PC Gez Shillito gez.shillito@northants.police.uk Twitter @GezShillito105

- Wildlife & Rural Crime Officers based in South Northants

PC Chloe Gillies chloe.gillies@northants.police.uk
PC Abbey Anstead abbey.anstead@northants.police.uk

- Team based at Towcester:

Katrina Heath - Neighbourhood Team Co-ordinator

Police Constable Chris Bird

Police Community Support Officer Charlotte Morris

PCSO Tara Cooksammy

PCSO Steph Bacon

PCSO Peter Firth

Towcester Team email: SCT-SouthNorthantsTowcester@northants.police.uk