It marked a huge change in how the public contacted police

The world’s oldest emergency helpline 999 on Sunday completed 80 years of its existence in the U.K., with the Scotland Yard celebrating the “cornerstone” of British policing by organising several events.

In the early days of the 1930s, just 24 staff in the old Victoria Embankment headquarters of the Metropolitan Police dealt with a couple of hundred calls a day. It was launched after a major fire in London in 1935 resulted in five fatalities. A committee was set up to look at how telephone operators could identify emergency calls.

Now, there are three centralised communication complexes in Bow, Hendon and Lambeth, employing over 2,000 people dealing with 13,000 to 20,000 calls per day. Met Police Chief Superintendent David Jackson, head of the Met Central Communications (CC) said, “The 999 system is the cornerstone not only of British policing but also for our emergency service partners.”

Critical function

“The level of accessibility that it provides allows emergency services to save lives and protect the public. Our dedicated staff operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year ensuring that police can be dispatched quickly to incidents where the public need us,” he said.

Being there 24/7 and ensuring that officers are dispatched quickly to emergency and priority incidents is a critical function for the police, Mr. Jackson said.

“The progress since 1937 has been enormous — and we will keep striving to improve the service over the next 80 years,” he said.

In 1937, the first-ever emergency number system anywhere in the world came into being in London with the introduction of the 999 call — marking an unprecedented change in the way the public communicated with the Metropolitan Police.

In July last year, Met CC launched its live twitter feed @MetCC from one of the three central communications complexes where first contact operators were answering tens of thousands of emergency calls every week.

@MetCC has had more than 3,50,800 posts submitted since its launch.